


devour me

by telanaris



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Begging, Biting, Blindfolds, Blood, Creampie, Dacryphilia, Dom/sub, Dry Humping, F/M, Face-Sitting, Femdom, Fingering, Gen, Gentle Dom, Julian Crying During Sex, Kinktober, Love Bites, Masturbation, Multiple Orgasms, NSFW, PWP, Penetrative Sex (Reader Receiving), Period play, Phone Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Praise Kink, Rimming, Rope Bondage, Self Insert, Sensory Deprivation, Smut, Spanking, Teasing, Temperature Play, Vaginal Fingering, handjob, magic sex, magical e-stim, redwings, rimjob, thigh hickeys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2019-07-23 21:11:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16167074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telanaris/pseuds/telanaris
Summary: Julian laughs, but it is a husky shallow sound. “Do you know, I think this is my favorite part of learning magic?” he says, lifting his hand from your sternum. He places each over your breasts, but does not yet touch them, letting the cool air emanating from his palms wash over them. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, cold ale, hot coffee whenever I want? That’s great—that’s the dream.”“Julian,” you whine, pressing forward into his touch, but he only pulls his hands further away.“But this?” he continues, his blush returning in earnest, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Using it to please you? To… to tease you? That’s what really makes all that studying worthwhile.”__________A collection of prompts filled as part of Kinktober 2018.(The prompts and pairings are noted in the chapter titles.)





	1. Face-Sitting (Julian x F!MC)

_“Smother me with your thighs.”_

She had crooned the words into his ear, her arms wrapped around his waist, fingers slipping under the hem of his shirt to trace up along his stomach. Her voice had been low and husky but carried an undeniable note of mischief in it, too. Thinking of the actor in the community theatre, Julian had thought she had been joking; he had laughed, nervously, before turning in her arms to find her fixing him with a most serious and determined expression.

Julian is not laughing anymore.

He’s not sure he _could_ laugh, honestly—he’s so teased tight and clenched he probably couldn’t come up with more than a delighted huff. Instead, as he sits on her face—thighs spread on either side of her head, her tongue probing the rim of his entrance—the only sounds he can make are thin little petulant whines, half-strangled groans.

The tip of her nose glides sweetly along his taint as she licks him, and each delicious wet swipe of her tongue has the tension in his thighs coiling tighter. He cannot help the involuntary buck of his hips against her face, chasing the pressure of her tongue against him—but before he has the space to feel ashamed for it, she moans against him. He can feel her eyelashes fluttering against his thighs, as great an indication as any of the abandon with which she is devouring him.

Still, he doesn’t really want to _‘smother’_ her… but if Julian does not get some relief soon, he might. His cock is swollen, red, leaking—spurned. Swallowing thickly, he reaches between his legs, and takes himself in hand. And between her mouth and his own hand, he _comes alive_ , the circuit complete, a current running through him—a groan escapes him, a shudder shakes him—

But then, beneath him, she pulls her mouth away.

“Did I say you could touch yourself?”

Her words leave him frozen, his fingers still wrapped around his cock. It’s naughty, he knows—disobedient—but he can’t help but circle his thumb over his head as he huffs the answer. “N-no.”

The sound of her hand meeting his ass rings out in the bedroom. Julian’s mouth falls open, relishing the resulting sting, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. In his hand, his cock twitches. If his defiance earns such punishment, he has no incentive, really, to behave.

“Are you going to be good,” she asks, “or am I going to have to tie back your hands?”

That… that’s tempting. For a moment Julian only pauses, turning the threat over in his head. The thought of being unable to touch himself is appealing: to know that whatever pleasure he seeks, only she has the power to grant it. But then again, that would take time. He’d have to move, climb off of her while she fetched something to bind him with. And right now, all he really wants is her mouth back on him again.

Julian takes a deep breath… but when he answers, his voice is still wavering. “No, I’ll be good.”

She presses her mouth to his inner thigh; he can feel the shape of her smile. “Good boy,” she praises him, nipping at the sensitive skin beneath her mouth before ducking back between his legs.


	2. Ass Worship (Julian x F!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short one today. 
> 
> There’s not actually a lot of ‘worship’ going on here, but I’ve always wanted to write a lil drabble of Julian just appreciating a nice butt, so... here it is.

He has loved her already in so many different ways, but there is always something uniquely enticing about this: when she kneels over his cock with her back turned towards him, when he has the perfect view of her ass as she sinks around him. Oh, yes, he misses being able to look her in the face—to see the way that pleasure twists her features, the shape of her mouth as she moans—but when she isn’t looking at him, Julian notices all the more subtle signs of her exertion and arousal… the poetry of her movement, the miracle of her body, the shifting of her muscles beneath her skin. It’s the tightness in her shoulders, the way she grips his knees to steady herself as she _lifts-falls-lifts_ over him, clenching his knees so tight he thinks she might shatter them (the old part of him he rarely feeds—the one that seeks pain—half-hoping she will.) The great trembling that stutter-quakes through her when her hips meet his and settle, how the force of that impact ripples across her skin. The near constant shudder and shimmy of her ass as she rides him—the desperate pace of her thrusts—and the sight of his shaft between her legs, dripping with her slick, just a glimpse before she drives herself down around him and takes him inside of her. ( _She looks just as good as she feels_.) And the crook of her arm, the angle of her elbow—Julian can tell she is touching herself, the muscles of her back winding tighter, ass clenching around him as she draws herself closer to her release. She looks as good as she feels—when she falls over that edge, Julian will not be far behind.


	3. Temperature Play (Julian x Reader, Julian x You)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian x Reader, Julian x You
> 
> I already wrote some temperature play for "legs, spread," but I thought it would be nice to write a one-shoot where Julian returns the favor. :) On a hot summer afternoon, he’s more than happy to help cool you down.  
> 
> (Please note: while this one-shot is told from 2nd person POV, female pronouns and female anatomy are described below.)

 

It’s summer in Vesuvia, again. Summer brings so many of the best things: the first of the summer berries to the market, the beautiful forked lightning of the summer storms. The days lengthen. More sunlight, more time to spend wandering the city streets, or relaxing on one of the many beaches on the lagoon, just outside the city. And summer means the return of the Masquerade, more extravagant this year than any before—after Count Lucio crashed the one last year, Nadia seems determined to make this one even more magnificent, just to spite him. You don’t blame her. In fact, you’d offered your help to do just that.

But summer does bring one thing you cannot stand: the heat.

Normally, it isn’t so bad. More often than not the sea winds keep the city tolerably breezy, if not cool. But today is one of those rare days where the humidity conspires with the wind: the air is thick and moist with the promise of a storm that has not yet broken, and there is not so much as a breeze to wick away the sweat. As you walk back from the palace to the shop, the air is utterly still, and the sun beats mercilessly overhead—and it is only mid-afternoon. The city will only get warmer until it sets. By the time you’ve returned to the shop you are panting, parched, covered in sweat. Beneath your shirt, you can feel each droplet of perspiration trickling down your back. 

If the canals weren’t still infested with vampire eels, you might have swam home; it certainly couldn’t be more unbearable than your walk.

In the shop, all the windows have been thrust open. But it’s doing little good. The curtains hang limp and unmoving; not even the most timid breeze moves through the house. The air feels stagnant, thick. But you’re hard pressed to say which is more infuriating: the fact the house seems hardly cooler than the street outside, or the way that Julian comes leaping down the stairs to greet you, book in hand, a smile on his face, as if the heat doesn’t affect him at all. 

“There she is—the most brilliant witch, the most inventive party planner in all the city!” he declared, jumping clean over the last three steps of the staircase and greeting you with a grin. If he’s put off to see you as you are—hair plastered to your head, soaking with sweat as if you’ve just run a marathon—he gives no indication of it. He wraps a hand around the back of your neck and ducks his head to plant a kiss on your sticky cheek. “You look lovely, dear,” he tells you with an adoring grin, though you are certain that could not be farther from the truth. “How goes it with our dear friend, the Countess?”

“Badly,” you answer, tone flat. Normally, just being around Julian is enough to put you in a good mood, but you’re exhausted and defeated from your long walk back to the shop. It’s hard not to blame yourself, either, for the way you are suffering: Nadia had offered you a carriage to take you home, and you had insisted on walking, welcoming the opportunity to stretch your legs. (After all, last week, when you had left the palace, it had been raining to hard to make the walk home.) “We’re having trouble pinning down a vendor for the fireworks—apparently the one we used last year is being held in prison in Drakr for defacing one of their monuments with an ill-directed rocket. It’s going to be almost impossible to replace him on such short notice. That,  _and_  I still can’t get the charm for the silent-dancing room quite right.”

“I’m sure it’s no matter, love,” Julian replies, cheerily. “If anyone can figure it out, it’s you.”

“Honestly, Julian, I don’t know if I can,” you reply, doubt creeping into your voice. “And this heat  _really_  doesn’t help either. It’s so hot I can barely think! I got so frustrated today I was tempted to lock myself in the Winter Room and not come out until, y’know, it’s actually winter.”

Julian laughs heartily. “But then you’d miss our trip to Nevivon, in the fall,” he cajoles, leaning forward to press a kiss to the tip of your nose. Then, more seriously, he adds, “I’m sorry it’s not going well. What can I do to help?”

You huff a mirthless laugh. “Can you make it twenty degrees cooler?”

There’s something mischievous in the curl of his smile when he meets your eyes. “Not quite. Something like it, maybe. But what about a glass of water first?”

If anything, the apartment upstairs feels even warmer than the shop below. Lethargic, you can’t do much more than hang your bag up on the hook by the door before you start tearing your clothes off—first your skirt, then your shirt, until you’re left in nothing but your underwear. It does not offer much relief, but at least you no longer feel your clothes sticking to you uncomfortably every time you move. Under the oppressive heat of the summer you barely have the energy to trudge over to the window and collapse in the window seat, certain that no breeze is coming to ease your discomfort, but unwilling to risk missing one should it stir. 

In no time at all Julian is crossing the room towards you, a glass in hand. The surface of the glass is clouded with condensation; when he passes it to you, it is cool to the touch, as is the water when you lift the glass to your parched lips. It’s evident Julian has used his magic to make the water cold for you. The water is deliciously cold on your tongue, and down your throat; you drain the glass in one go, and pass it back to him with a grateful smile.

“You’re getting really good at that,” you tell him, and he colors and smiles under the praise, his ears burning red. Your fingers brush his as you pass him the glass; they are still cool from his magic, and it sends a shiver running down your spine. 

“I’ve been practicing,” is all he says, by way of explanation. But when he crosses the room to fill the glass again in the sink, you realize how true that statement is: the book lying on the table—the one he’d been reading when he ran down the stairs to greet you—is one on magical theory.

Pride blooms in your chest. In the year since you’ve known him Julian has really taken to magic. And while you know he’s not doing it just to please you, you can’t help but be proud of him all the same: for his ambition, for his natural curiosity. He’s got a real knack for it, too, though it’s been hard to convince him that’s the case. 

“Whatever you’re doing, it’s working.”

Julian turns back from the sink towards you. “Thank you,” he replies with a smile, placing the second glass of cool water in your hands and sitting down on the floor at your feet, just beside the window seat. You’re so thirsty you hardly notice the look he’s giving you, tracing the line of your throat with his eyes as you tilt your head back and down the second glass of water… but you see it when you finish the glass, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand.

“What?”

Julian’s smile widens, though it looks a little hesitant, too. He tears his eyes away and fixes them on the floor, his blush creeping up his neck, now. “Well, I just…” he begins, before his voice trails off. Then his eyes snap to your face, and his uncertainty is replaced with his trademark bravado: eyebrow quirked, smile stretched into a smirk. 

“I could do with a little more practice, I think,” he says, “if you’re up for it.” Then his hand lights gently on your ankle, still cool from his magic and  _delightful_  in the heat of the summer. It leaves your legs erupting in gooseflesh, the hairs standing on end, and you can’t help the sigh of relief that crosses your lips at his touch. 

Then—it suddenly occurs to you—your eyes meet his, and you measure him with your glance. “Is this why you were so excited for me to come home this afternoon?” you ask, thinking of the speed with which he’d leapt down the stairs to greet you.

Julian, bless him,  _tries_  to look scandalized at the suggestion, but doesn’t really succeed: he can’t quite tame the ferocity of his grin. “Are you suggesting my intentions are impure? Darling, you wound me,” he says, but all the while his cool hand creeps further up your calf, along the back of your leg, behind your knee. “I just want to get a bit of studying done—is there really something so wrong with that?” But the way he licks his lips after betrays his true intentions, as does the way he looks at yours, hungry and yearning. 

And his hand is so cool, and the day is so warm, and you love him, after all—how could you do anything but encourage him, and the ‘studious’ mood he finds himself in?

“No.” You set the glass aside, and toss your legs over the side of the window seat so that you are sitting with your back to the window instead of stretched along it. Julian kneels between your legs, looking at you eagerly; you take his chin in your hand, and tilt it upwards. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

When your mouth meets his, Julian groans into the kiss; when his hands—both cool—cup the back of your calves, you gasp.

“Is this—is this okay?” Julian asks, sinking back on his heels and pulling away, watching your face carefully for any reaction. “It’s not too cold, or, uhh—”

“It’s great, Julian,” you tell him, running a hand through his hair. “It feels great.” 

Julian nods, but still regards you seriously, looking more than a little bit nervous. “You’ll tell me, won’t you, if it gets too cold? If you get uncomfortable? You know sometimes I still kind of, well, get carried away, a bit.”

“I’ll tell you,” you reassure him, with a sweet smile. “But right now it’s fantastic. Kiss me again?”

With a grin, Julian rises back up on his knees, brushing the tip of your nose with his own. “I think I can manage that.”

He leans forward to devour your mouth in a hungry kiss—and if your earlier suspicions were not enough, the heat of his kiss confirms it: he was definitely waiting for you to come home to him. His fingertips creep from the back of your calves, first to your knees, then to your thighs. When he presses his hands flat against the sides of your legs the sheer  _relief_ that floods through you threatens to make you dizzy, it is just that powerful. 

Julian leans into the kiss, humming in satisfaction against your lips. His hands glide up your legs; when they brush over the sides of your panties and over your hips, you can’t help but shudder, the coolness of his hands feeling all the colder against the warm muscles of your core.

And then, all of a sudden, Julian is smiling too hard to kiss properly; he pulls away, eyes shining with delight as his fingertips ghost up your sides. “Have I told you today how lovely you are?”

Your breath is short under his cool touch, your eyes lidded when you respond: “Once, at least, not more than five minutes ago. Twice, now that I think of it—you said as much this morning before I left.”

“Then let’s make it an even three,” Julian croons, his hands lifting to frame your face. You lean into his touch, his chilled hands soothing on your neck. “You look lovely,” he half-whispers, pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth, “and I love you.” His hands slide down your neck, cool fingers tracing from throat to shoulder, loosening the straps of your bra as they go so that they dangle off your arms and the bra sags beneath the weight of your breasts, drooping looser with every shallow, rapid breath. “Can I…?” he asks, seeking permission you grant easily with a nod of your head. His fingertips trace back to your shoulders, and he pulls you into his arms; his palms slide down your shoulder blades until they meet the catch of your bra and free it, pulling the sweat-soaked garment away and leaving you bare before him from the waste up.

“Lovely.”

“That’s four,” you point out.

“And still not enough,” he quips, leaning forward to press a kiss to your sternum. His mouth is warm, the kiss generous; when he replaces his mouth with his open palm you press into his touch, spine curved, body tingling.    

Julian laughs, but it is a husky shallow sound. “Do you know, I think this is my favorite part of learning magic?” he says, lifting his hand from your sternum. He places each over your breasts, but does not yet touch them, letting the cool air emanating from his palms wash over them. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, cold ale, hot coffee whenever I want? That’s great—that’s the  _dream_.” 

“ _Julian_ ,” you whine, pressing forward into his touch, but he only pulls his hands further away.

“But this?” he continues, his blush returning in earnest, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Using it to please you? To… to tease you? That’s what really makes all that studying worthwhile.”

You give him a pleading look, and it almost seems like he’ll give in… before his resolve strengthens. He holds his hands at a tantalizing distance from your chest. You can feel your nipples hardening and you want so badly for him to touch you—and it is so unlike him, not to give in when you ask. But something about his study of magic over the past few years has emboldened him. His teeth find his lip, and he keeps his eyes on your face. The cold feels so good against your skin, and with his hands hovering over the sensitive flesh of your chest, your whole body feels cooler. Another bead of sweat trickles—tickles down your spine, and you whine, leaning closer.

And then—only then, when you can feel the wetness of your arousal between your legs and you swear to yourself that if he teases you  _another minute_  you’re just going to press him back against the apartment floor and climb on top of him—he takes your breasts in hand, thumbing over your hardened nipples with his frigid fingers.

The cry you make rings out through the apartment—certainly loud enough to be heard on the street outside, what with all the windows thrust as wide as they are—but Julian swallows the greater part of it, surging up to meet your mouth, parting your lips with his tongue. The quiver of a moan leaves his lips humming against yours, betraying his own answering excitement, and he circles your nipple twice more before taking it between forefinger and thumb and pinching. 

Which, in turn, leaves your brows pinched in answer, your whole face scrunched tight with pleasure. By now, after a year, he knows just how to touch you to get you going… and the delightful coldness of his hands only the heightens the sensations, making his work easier. You whimper, leaning your forehead against his, breathing hard in the space between you. Julian pulls only far enough to way to look at you, his gaze simmering with longing, his breathing shallow, his eyes lidded—

The whimper of pleasure turns into a cry of shock, then discomfort; too fast his hands grow too cold, and you flinch away from him without really meaning too, pulling back from the edge of the window seat. “Too much!” you hiss, covering yourself with your hands, “Julian, too cold—”

“Ah!” Julian exclaims, pulling his hands away, rubbing them together to raise the temperature of his fingers. He gives you a sheepish look, his ears crimson with embarrassment. “S-sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to, I just—I lost control a bit, there.” He looks so morose, so contrite—it’s almost enough to spoil the mood. “I’m not… I’m not  _quite_ as good at magic as you think I am, sometimes. Maybe we shouldn’t have tried this….” He tears his eyes away from yours, a deep shame on his face disproportionate to his transgression, and his shoulders droop under the weight of his mistake.

You can’t bear it—you don’t want to see him discouraged. He’s done so well, so far. And really, its not unusual, and not anything to be ashamed about, for him to still lose control of his magic occasionally when his emotions get the better of him. After all, he’s still learning.

“Hey. It’s okay,” you tell him, reaching out to cup his face, soothing his worries away with the stroke of your thumb over his cheek. He leans into your touch, distress lessening with each brush of your fingers. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. We’ll just practice more, right?”

Julian gives a light laugh. “Yes. We’ll keep practicing.” His teeth catch his lip as he looks up at you with something like wonder. His hands—now room temperature—find your hips, and try to coax you off the window seat. “Come here? Even if I can’t… well. Even if I can’t relieve you from the heat, I think I can probably still think of one or two ways to distract you.”

“Yeah?” you reply, lifting an eyebrow.

“Yeah.” 

For a moment, you let him wait, looking at you, hopeful, yearning—then you give a light, quick nod. Julian  _beams_. His hands find the band of your underwear and pull it down your legs, before he takes your hips in hand again and guides you off the window seat and into his lap. You wrap your legs around his waist, you drape your arms around his shoulders; you pull him close and kiss him full.

He’s still grinning—wide enough that it's hard to kiss—but the smile melts away as you press kiss after insistent kiss to the corner of his mouth, winding your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and tugging, gently. Julian groans. His hands leave your hips, loop around the swell of your thighs. With a gentle nudge of his forehead he tilts your head back and ducks his head, and with a look on his face you could only describe as penitent, finds your breast—the very same he had accidently abused in his enthusiasm—and takes it into his warm mouth, just as his thumb parts the wet folds of your sex and circles your clit.

His earlier teasing had left you plenty riled already, but the touch of his fingers…! It leaves your blood roaring in your veins, your body clenched, your legs circling his waist in a vice-like grip. The urgency and exactitude with which he touches you proves his contrition: he wants only to give you pleasure, to bring you to your peak and then draw you over it. But the delight of the spell he had used earlier is still vivid in your memory, brilliant and tantalizing… and if he’s willing to try just once more, that will be the end of you.

“Julian.” He licks along your nipple, caresses your sex—lost in it you arch your back into his touch before the presence of mind returns to you to insist, tugging at his hair— “ _Julian._ ”

He follows the tug of your fingers, pulling away to bat his lashes at you and grin, dazed, warm. “Yes, dear?”

“Can you—can you try again? Just a little cold.”

His smile wanes, and the doubt creeps across his face. “I don’t want to hurt you again,” he says, with an apologetic look. “Maybe we shouldn’t risk it.”

And you don’t want to make him uncomfortable—don’t want to push. But Julian is better at magic than he knows, more capable than he cares to admit to himself… and, above all, you trust him. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But I trust you.” You draw your knuckles over his face, push his auburn curls from his eyes and press a gentle kiss to his cheek. “After all, practice makes perfect, right?”

He tugs the corner of his lip into his mouth, looking not aroused but uncertain. “Are you  _sure?_ ”

“I am. But I want you to be, too.”

Julian takes a deep breath. Then, he brings his hands together, rubbing them against one another. His brow furrows as he watches his hands… its the same expression he wears when he’s puzzling over an old medical text, or working on another of his experiments, and it’s somehow both adorable and incredibly hot all at once. When he’s satisfied he presses his fingers to his arm once… then twice, to be double sure, before he turns back to you, looking into your face as his hand dips once more between your legs.

His cold thumb draws along the already-leaking lips of your sex, and your whole body jolts with the pleasure of it when it finds your clit. It feels like all the hairs on your body have stood at attention at once, and your head falls forward to lean against Julian’s; your mouth falls open with an unsteady moan.

“Is it alright? It’s not too much? You’ll tell me if it—”

“ _Good_ ,” you manage, between heavy breaths. “Good, it’s good Julian, and I’m close, please don’t stop…”

His touch leaves your body shaking, trembling in his arms, but he holds you, tight and secure against him. Now, though, he won’t kiss you. His eyes dart between your eyes and your sex, gauging for reaction, a look of the utmost concentration on his face. It is like he is trying with all his attention and willpower to make sure he does not lose control of the spell. He is focussed only on you: your comfort, your satisfaction, your pleasure. 

It’s this, maybe, more than anything else, that draws you towards your ending: seeing that look on his face, and knowing how well-loved and cared for you are. How cherished.

When your climax comes there is little you can do to silence yourself. His fingers feel so good and he is relentless with them, coaxing higher and more breathless pleasure-sounds from you as your orgasm rolls through you. You press yourself closer to him, holding fast to his shoulders; you bury your face in his neck, but this only half-buries the sounds of bliss and relief that tumble out of your mouth as the whole world goes out from under you and there is nothing but the nest of Julian’s legs beneath you, his hands upon you, his breathing close to your ear as you buck your hips weakly into his hand until even that pleasure is too much to bear and you still.

After, you keep your head pressed to his neck, catching your breath; Julian presses a kiss to your cheek, just in front of your ear, and wraps his arms around you, running his hands up and down your spine. It takes you a moment to collect yourself, but when you do, you smile, pressing a kiss to his neck.

“You did  _so good_ , Julian. I knew you could.”

“Well, that makes one of us.” You can feel the skin under your mouth flushing with pride, even as he tries to brush the compliment off as though it’s nothing. “How are you feeling, love? Would you like me to draw you a bath? I’m fairly confident I can make the water nice and cool without anything going catastrophically wrong.”

You laugh, lightly, and press a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Only if you join me, and let me take care of you next.”

Julian grins. “That, I can do.”


	4. Spanking (Julian x GN!Reader, Julian x You)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian x Reader, Julian x You. (No gendered pronouns are used.)  
> Spanking, + some (magical) e-stim.  
> There’s more than one kinky use for magic. ;)
> 
> Has Julian’s ass ever looked quite so lovely…? Probably. Maybe it’s just that you’ve never been able to appreciate it the way you can now. Your legs are stretched straight in front of you on the cool bed sheets, and Julian is lying face-down across your lap, propping himself up with his elbows, as your hand skates along the curve of his ass.
> 
> Beneath your fingers—which touch him with only the lightest of caresses—his skin is twitching.

Has Julian’s ass ever looked quite so lovely…? _Probably_. Maybe it’s just that you’ve never been able to appreciate it the way you can now. Your legs are stretched straight in front of you on the cool bed sheets, and Julian is lying face down across your lap, propping himself up with his elbows, as your hand skates along the curve of his ass.

Beneath your fingers—which touch him with only the lightest of caresses—his skin is twitching.

Not so long ago, trapped in the Tower, Julian had asked you for ‘mischief,’ for ‘fun’; the magic you had shown him then was only the beginning. Now instead of radiating sensations of warmth or coolness your hands emit a current of energy, carefully measured, just enough to leave the muscles of his upper thighs and his backside contracting involuntarily under its influence. They spasm and twitch, though your fingers hardly touch his skin. You have started slow, barely generating enough energy to have an effect. Probably all Julian can feel is a tingling, a dull throbbing as his muscles tighten and release to the pulse of the current. But even this has had a _remarkable_ effect on him. His cock is flush and warm, trapped between your thigh and his abdomen. He’s already whimpering quietly, the sound muffled—you can tell without having to see that he’s pulled his lip between his teeth—but whether this is because of the subtle magic you are currently working, or because he knows what is yet to come, you cannot say.

A good way to find out: you draw your hand away, and as the tingle of the current recedes Julian whines… until you swing your hand hard, palm meeting the swell of his cheek with an audible smack— _thwak!_ —and the spark, the undeniable sting of both your hand and the spell’s energy meeting his skin once again.

“AH!”

Julian’s yelp of surprise cuts through the quiet. He flinches from your touch, bucking his hips against your lap, breathing heavy. Already from that slap alone the skin of his cheeks is pinkening. You bring your hand to the red mark and massage it with your fingers, rubbing the feeling back into it while Julian catches his breath.

“Julian? You good?”

“Sensational,” comes his breathy answer, though his shoulders still shake against the tide of sensation washing over him. You cannot help but grin, pulling your hand away only long enough to recharge the spell, before slipping your hands between his cheeks. “M- _muhh_ —marvelous, _mmm,_ ” Julian manages, struggling with the word when your fingers meet his taint and rub firm circles along it, the spine-tingling spell holding all the while, leaving his thighs twitching.

“I’m going to try a little more power. Is that okay?”

“Yes,” Julian replies, emphatic, enthusiastic. He arches his back, pushing his ass into the cup of your hand. “I know you will be careful with me—I trust you.”

It is a simple thing: that he trusts you. And yet not simple at all. Three weeks ago you think he did not even trust himself, but he lays himself in your lap without reservation, spreads himself vulnerable for you, and trusts that you will touch him only kindly, with good intentions. It means so much to you, the trust Julian has placed in you—you want only to reward that trust.

(With pleasure.)

Julian sob petulantly as you pull your hand away—but precautions are important. He grinds his cock impatiently against your thigh, but “ _Stay still,”_ you command,and he goes motionless at once. Out of the corner of your eye you can see him turning his head, regarding you curiously, but your attention is focused on the magic you are weaving—magic that you recognize could be dangerous, and deeply painful if not handled with care. You hold your fingers to your arm, closing your eyes to gauge the sensation as you make the spell just a touch more powerful… the tingling swelling to something more of a prickle, the muscles of your forearm galvanized and leaping under your own touch. That will do.)

A bratty whine builds in Julian’s throat before your hands have even touched his flesh: he can feel the power of the magic emanating from your palm from an inch away, and presses himself against it, gasping when skin meets skin, his whole body tensing at the electrifying contact.

He is... _so_ beautiful like this. There is not a single part of Julian’s body that you do not admire, but with him spread as he is in your lap you are in the unique position to appreciate the parts of him you don’t ordinarily get to see in such intimate contexts. For example: the tightness in his shoulders, the way they tremble, the smooth glide of the strong shoulder blades under his skin as he struggles to prop himself up, the pleasure threatening to make him weak and boneless. Perspiration beads on his neck and rolls down muscled slopes to the small of his back. He is so broad, and smooth… your eyes catch on the dimples in his lower back, near the little dip of his spine, just over his ass. Your hands find the tight muscles there and knead them, watching with endless fascination the way his whole lower body fits and starts under the flux of the magic.

“It’s not too much?”

Julian’s answer is a contented groan, and his head droops, hangs a little lower between his shoulders. “It’s good, it’s great—could you—you could use a little more, honestly, I think—”

And so you do: very, very carefully (you are always careful with him; you wear his trust like a badge of honor, you take that responsibility seriously) and being sure to test the magic on yourself first, you increase the power of the spell. Your fingers dig into the muscle of his ass, and he keens with delight; when you spread his cheeks and your thumb circles his entrance, hardly any firmer than a gentle spring breeze, he shouts.

One of his elbows gives out beneath him and his whole body pitches down. His fingers fist frantically in the sheets, and he squirms in your lap, pressing his cock to your leg, pressing his ass to your hand, all the while panting, vocalizing a stream of harried nonsense: “ _ahh—ahh—hhaah!—ah—yes, good—ahhh—hhnngh…._ ” The skin of his backside quivering restlessly. Oh, the _sounds_ he makes when he’s being touched…! All real, none for show, made evident when you feel his cock twitch between your bodies and then leak, the wetness of his precum spilling down the inside of your leg.

And that… that’s _gorgeous_ , that is, but the way he is trying none-too-discretely to thrust against your leg is not something you can accept so easily. He’ll come too soon, at that rate. And while you’d ordinarily just tell him to stop—he’s so delightfully obedient when you use a commanding tone with him—he had told you today before you got started: he wanted to be hit. To be spanked.

_Thwak! Thwak!_

One slap for each cheek, and it leaves the skin red, and Julian drawing ragged gasps in their wake. He’s lost the strength of his forearms; his face his half-pressed to the mattress, his head turned towards the side, towards you. You can see the pinch of his brows, the red gash of his mouth and the flash of teeth as he struggles to catch his breath, all great shallow lungfuls that do nothing to even the pace of his breathing.

 _Thwak!_ A third, for good measure, greeting with a pitched whine and a great shudder that runs down the length of his body—you can feel it, his body trembling against your legs with a wave that passes from head to toe, a tide coming in.

“Are you going to behave for me, Julian?”

He heaves an exasperated whine. When he speaks, it is nearly in a whisper. “I thought I was.”

“Not so. Can’t have you rubbing yourself out ‘til you finish. Get up on your hands and knees?’

His shoulders rise with a dramatic breath… then he sighs, planting his palms into the mattress, and pushing himself up as instructed so that he is crouching over your lap, rather than draped across it. His kneecaps kiss the side of your leg; his hips hover tantalizingly close, his cock—smeared with his own precum, glistening—nearly at eye level.

You watch it jump as you bring your hand across his backside again, two slaps in quick succession— _thwak, thwak._

But Julian—so determined to be good for you, to behave, ‘ _I thought I was_ ’—stays nearly perfectly still. His ears, peeking out from his auburn curls, are flushed a deep crimson, and his cock twitches between his legs, but his body hardly moves otherwise: neither to flinch from, nor press into your touch.

“Very good,” you say, running your thumb over the reddened flesh and leaning forward to press a kiss to his hip. “You’re doing so good, Julian. Do you want to come?”

He does move, then—he nods so vigorously his whole body shakes a little with it. “Yes, yes— _please_ , let me come?”

“How would you like to come? Would you like me to keep spanking you?”

“N-no, no, the—ahh, that spell, please, if you would—”

Not a moment is he left waiting: you think of thunderstorms in the summer, forked lightning veining a darkened sky, and Julian moans. Your fingers tingle along the skin blushed red from each forceful smack, and you watch the hairs on Julian’s thighs stand on end. Greedy, he begs you, “ _more, more_ ,” and you are happy to oblige, charging the magic just the slightest bit stronger as your fingers trace the rim of his entrance again. Julian writhes under the sensation, a biting-pinching, his skin jumping with every pulse, his whole body twisting before—slowly, determined—he straightens his posture, to behave, to please you. Still, he trembles; and when your other hand creeps beneath his abdomen, tracing from taint to sac, he comes with a sweet cry before your hand ever reaches his shaft. How tight the muscles of his shoulders, how loud the sound that he makes—mixed surprised and pleasure and delight—as he bucks his hips into nothing but air. His dick twitches, red and spilling, his spend splattering your legs beneath him... it smears across his stomach when he collapses back into your lap a moment later, breathing hard, eyes shut.

You smile fondly as you watch him recover, combing his hair with your fingers, pushing it back from his sweat-slick brow. “That was beautiful, Julian. You did so well.” Still, you can’t help a pleased hum; an amused laugh. “But you know, you didn’t even let me get to the best part.”

Julian cracks an eye open to look up at you. You cannot tell if the flush on his cheeks is from sated pleasure, or mild embarrassment. “That _wasn’t_ the best part? From my perspective, it was all splendid, darling.”

“Well,” you muse aloud, smoothing your fingers along his sideburns, “as much as it pleases me to hear that, next time, I’d like to get my hand around your cock.”

Julian’s eyes fall shut, and he sound a low, rumbling groan of contentment. “’Next time’—I look forward to that.”

You do, too—and judging how well he liked the first time, the second might come sooner than Julian thinks.


	5. Begging (Julian x You, Julian x GN!Reader)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Begging. (I didn’t care for today’s prompts so I chose one I didn’t use from an earlier day.)  
> Julian x Reader, Julian x You (Gender neutral reader.)  
> dry humping, intercourse, slight exhibitionism? + a little bit of begging
> 
> For the anon on Tumblr who wanted to grind on Julian. ;) 

It will never fail to enchant you: the sight of Julian’s face twisted up with pleasure, ethereal and otherworldly in the soft blue glow that radiates from the starstrand blossoming above. 

But the look he is giving you now is very different than the one he had favored you with last summer, when he had offered you one of the deadly flowers and flashed an appraising grin as he waited to see whether or not you would accept it. Now, you have taken him into your heart; now, you are his home. Now, there is no question of it: you are his, and he is yours, however dangerous, to whatever end.

The garden, too, is transformed. It has been almost a year since Julian returned to Vesuvia, and Nadia awoke from her coma, and the plague had  _nearly_  returned to ravage the city. But Lucio had not succeeded, and ever since his defeat last Masquerade, the city has flourished. The gardens and parks that had been closed for years (too expensive a luxury to maintain when the plague was draining the County’s coffers, when parts of the city had been sinking into the lagoon) are gradually being rehabilitated, and reopened. 

Sentimentality had moved you and Julian to offer to restore this one yourselves. As the weather had warmed you had come to the secret garden with gloves and spades and seed packets. Carefully, you had untangled the vines from the statues; Julian had oiled and repaired the gate. Brick by brick, with plenty of mortar, you had repaired the crumbling wall that you had backed Julian against, your hand pressing his wound. With the help of a new spell you had taught him, Julian had cleared the algae from the still waters of the fountain; once empty, he had repaired its pumps so that clean water now flowed forth from the old spouts. Along the perimeter of the garden, you had planted flowers. Already their green shoots are poking out of the dark soil, young and curious. The change in the garden is so dramatic it might be unrecognizable but for the starstrand, which you have both left untouched; it weaves through the treetops like faerie lights in the dark.

Today, your labors are at an end. The garden looks more beautiful than ever, and it is finally ready to be opened to the neighborhood. When you leave, tonight, you will take the padlock with you, leaving the gate unlocked. 

To celebrate your accomplishments, Julian had brought a bottle of wine and a small picnic of breads and cheeses, meats and other spreads. It is a little bittersweet; proud as you are of your accomplishments, tonight is probably the last time you will have this place to yourselves. You had sat on the bench, admiring the fruition of your endeavor. Feeding one another slices of bread as the sun went down, Julian had grown progressively tipsier as dark descended and the starstrand began to light.

Now the bottle lies empty, the picnic abandoned. The air is filled with the chirping of crickets, and the merry laugh of the fountain, its water raining down in a halo that glimmers in the blue light. But through all that night noise you can still hear Julian, huffing lightly as you sit, straddling his lap, and slowly grinding your hips against his.

His bottom lip glistens from how often (already) he has pulled it into his mouth, and it catches the starstrand’s glow, a dewy bead of light trapped in the plush pink. Lifting your hips away from his you bring your hands to frame his face and kiss him, hungry and wet… but between your mouths he’s still panting, whining petulantly as his hands try to drag your hips back down into his lap. That won’t do—you slap his hands away, before pressing another insistent, sweet kiss to his mouth.

Though unspoken, the message is clear: if he wants that friction back, Julian will have to earn it. 

One last pitiful whimper forces its way past Julian’s lips… but then his hands lift to your face and hold it gently, his thumbs stroking your cheeks as he draws your mouth towards his. He has but one goal: to please you. He licks along the seam of your mouth, nibbles your bottom lip, drags his tongue along yours. You can taste the last of the wine on him, heady and sweet. Before long there’s a warmth spreading in your chest—and pooling in your gut. Julian wraps an arm around you and draws you flush against him, but this contact seems to do little to sate his desire; before long, between kisses, he is whispering against your lips, “ _please, please_.”

He has been so good, more patient than usual—you relent, sinking back down to straddle his hips once more. Between your legs his arousal is evident, straining against his trousers. It is easy, then, to trap it between your thighs; the next grind of your hips is torturously slow, savoring every inch of him as he slides against you. Even with so many layers of clothing yet between you, you can feel him pressing insistently against you; Julian’s hand tightens its grip at your side, and he buries his face against your neck and you can feel, rather than hear, the frantic rhythm of his breathing increase pace.

Together, you have transformed this once-unkempt garden into something neat, taming its beauty; you look at Julian, though, and want him messy, wild, trapped in a turmoil of pleasure only half-granted. All the marble faces of the garden, excavated from their ivory mantles, will bear witness to his unraveling.

(And he can beg all he likes, but you will be as impassive, as immovable as those self-same statues. He can plead, sob for you, but you will not give him what he seeks until it is almost too late, until he is so close to his own end that the ability to beg—to speak intelligibly at all—has left him completely.)

Your fingers wind into the hairs at the nape of his neck and tug, just as you shift your hips to roll against his one more at the same agonizingly slow pace.

Julian keens against your neck. It’s a beautiful sound; less beautiful is the way it is muffled. You want him screaming to the starstrand, head tossed back in abandon, tears streaking his cheeks and catching the light just as well as the plush wet of his lips. So you press your face to his skin, nudging the underside of his jaw with the tip of your nose until he gets the message and excavates himself from your collar. Julian tilts his head back until it meets the brick of the wall behind him; you press your lips to his jawline, then take the sensitive skin beneath between your teeth.

With a gasp, Julian’s hand comes to cradle the back of your head, and he uses the leverage of his feet against the paved stone below to lift off the bench, thrusting his hips towards yours. But you pull away before he makes contact, rising up onto your knees, bent over as you worry a line of red along the muscle of his throat, biting the spot just below his ear hard enough to bruise. His fingers wind tighter in your hair, and his throat vibrates under your mouth with the moan that shakes through him.

Between pleasure sounds, he gasps your name, and his other hand finds your hip, trying to coax your waist back down to his.

You are not quite so suggestible. Instead of being led, you pull further away, pull your face from his neck and hover above him, tilting your head to the side to watch him. His face is already flushed, and under your scrutiny, he pulls his lip back between his teeth, gnawing at it so fiercely you fear he will split it. Your hand comes to cup his chin; you plant your thumb in the center of his bottom lip and tug gently downwards until his teeth release it. His mouth is swollen, red, gleaming. Without lowering your hips, you dip your head to kiss him, but he only meets you half-heartedly. Your tongue swipes against his lips, asking permission, but he only keens, so pitched that the word is nearly indecipherable: “ _please_.”

You smile against his lips. You kiss him gently, chastely, once in each corner of his mouth.

But his keening soon dissolves into a frustrated whine. His hands find your knees and slide upwards, fingers skating up your thighs as his throat bobs. “Please,” he begs, his voice rough with desire, with desperation. “Please, I know this is not the place, but I… I want you.”

“Mmm, but should I let you have me?” you reply, musing aloud. “We are, after all, in public. And we’ve just finished cleaning this place up. Are you really asking me to defile it, and undo all our good work?”

Julian makes a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob, and kisses his forehead to your neck, pressing a kiss to the notch of your collar. “That’s cruel, darling,” he admonishes. “I’ve been good, haven’t I? I’ve behaved. No matter how I wanted to pull you into my arms while you were wrangling all that ivy, or repainting the fence. And the garden—it isn’t  _technically_ public just yet. For now, it’s ours… and we might not get another shot. Please, love, please….”

You tilt your head, eyes meeting the ceiling in a look of mock-consideration as you hum, ‘thoughtfully.’ But as you do your hips sink lower, until—Julian gasps—his erection is pressed once more between your thighs. You drag your hips along his, a slow wave… but after one glide you settle over him, slowing to a stop. Smiling sweetly, you command, “Tell me how badly you want it.”

Again Julian’s hands have come to clutch your hips. His fingers dig into the flesh of your thighs, your waist, but he does not try to force your thrusts; rather, you get the distinct impression he is holding you so tightly to manifest his own restraint, to _hold back_  from bucking up against you, unwilling to repeat his earlier mistake. 

“So badly,” he whispers, voice close to cracking. His cock throbs against your legs, disobedient; it is as if by acknowledging his desire alone some part of him cannot stop himself from seeking it, from reaching for your warmth. “I want you so badly, I’m burning brighter than the starstrand with it. Under my skin… I’m on fire, please…”

Your fingers find his scalp and comb through his hair, and you smile, fondly. No one has ever made you feel quite so wanted—so beautiful, so desirable—as Julian. It’s incredibly, mind-numbingly  _hot_ , but in moments like this (even now, when the context is lurid) you cannot help but feel such tenderness for him. 

It is that tenderness, really, that moves you, more than the desperation of his pleading. You roll your hips back only to buck forward again, setting a slow but steady pace, your own longing awakening with every thrust. 

His cock gives another insistent twitch between your legs, and you can feel the fabric of his trousers growing damp; already, he is leaking. His fingers change tactic, fisting instead at the cloth on your waist instead of your hips (you know it is because he has no desire to bruise you, because he would never forgive himself for hurting you, even on accident.) All the while he sighs and pleads, his eyebrow knit together, lips pulled back on teeth as he begs, babbles: “ _fuck, fuck, yes, please, don’t stop, I’m close, it feels so good, please don’t stop again—”_

Until (of course) you do.

It’s an anguished sound, the wail he makes then. He leans his head against your shoulder, murmuring against your neck, words half-swallowed by his sobs: “ _please, anything, I’ll do anything, I’m so close,_ ” the withheld pleasure driving him mad as he bucks his hips weakly against yours. Instead of relenting, your hands come over his; he whines in displeasure as you loosen his fingers. His hands shake as you pull them out of your clothes and set them on the bench, on either side of your legs, palms down.

Then you reach for the band of your trousers, and push them down past your waist, sliding them off one leg at a time so that you are bare before him.

Julian gasps—you don’t give him time to admire the view. You cut off his inhale with the tips of your fingers pressing past his mouth; he closes his eyes, groans gratefully as he curls his tongue around your fingers, coating them neatly in his saliva. When you pull them out, his lips are shining; you reach between your legs and finger yourself roughly, quickly, one finger then the other—just enough to prepare. He had said it himself—he is close—but you want to know the press of him within you before he finishes. Only briefly do you scissor and twist your fingers, just enough to accept him without pain. All the while Julian watches your face, transfixed; when you pull your fingers back out and reach for his trousers he beats you to it, unfastening them in record time and pulling his flushed cock free. 

It’s so tempting, to take his cock in hand and simply sink around him… but you can’t resist the chance to tease him, first. So you lower yourself into his lap and press his cock once more between your legs, his slick head tantalizingly close to your entrance, and grind your hips against his.

Julian moans, hands on your hips again—this time, he stops you, holding them back after the second revolution of your hips against his.

“Darling, I—” he begins, then swallows, face flushed. His grey eyes meet yours, apologetic and desperate. As usual when he’s anxious and a little embarrassed, he is far from eloquent: “I’m very—I’m  _really_  not going to last, so if you, ahhh—if you want to do more than tease—not to push, if you don’t, but if you  _do_ , your window of opportunity might be, well,  _is_ , closing. So to speak.”

Is he—is he _apologizing?_  As if you did not know how close he was, as if you did not know what you were doing—as if you were not the one responsible for bringing him so close to the threshold of his pleasure! You huff a light laugh, lifting your hips just enough to reach between your legs and guide his cock to your entrance. “I want you too, Julian,” you reassure him, looping your arms around his shoulders. “It may be our last chance, after all—best take advantage of it.” 

Slow as your earlier thrusting, inch by torturous inch, you take him inside of you. 

And that’s it—it flips some switch inside of him, a line crossed—Julian cannot tolerate another moment of teasing. He moans, low in the back of his throat. As soon as he is fully sheathed within you, his hands come to your hips, and his eyes lift to yours, asking permission; you nod. 

Julian groans—in relief as much as pleasure—then uses the grip on your hips to guide your thrusting, setting a far quicker pace than the one you had kept to. As he rolls your hips against his he digs his heels into the floor, lifting his hips to buck upwards into each of your thrusts. Each revolution winds you tighter, leaves you tingling with pleasure. He glides in and out of you easily, but buried himself deeper and harder within you with each frantic smack of his thighs against yours. 

And he’s right—he did warn you, after all—he’s close. He dips his head to press a quick kiss to your chest, just above your heart, before his tempo grows unsteady. “ _I’m sorry_ ,” he huffs, “it’s too good, I can’t—I’m going to come—”

Apologizing, again. Unbelievable. As if getting him off wasn’t the goal from the start, all personal pleasure aside, an added bonus to the wreckage you wanted to make of him. Your hands find his face, pull his lips away from your chest and force him to look into your face. 

“I want you to come,” you insist, but the firmness you had hoped for in your time gets lost somewhere between your lungs and your tongue; your own arousal leaves your voice breathy, words wavering. “Come for me, Julian?”

He holds your gaze for a breath before it is too much, to intense; he takes his abused lip between his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut and pulls your hips to his. His pace quickens, his thrusting more shallow, until the whole of his body stiffens beneath you. His hands clutch your hips as he comes with a cry, emptying himself, bucking weakly until he lowers his hips back into the bench and stills, breathing hard. 

But he does not give himself long to recover. His breathing has barely slowed before he’s cracking his eyes open, favoring you with a dazed grin. Gingerly, he lifts your hips just enough to pull his softening cock out of you. Stickiness follows, his spend leaking out of you, dripping between your legs and into his lap. 

Julian lifts a brow, clicks his tongue. “Oh, what a mess I’ve made,” he pronounces, a coy lilt to his voice. “And after we spent so much of the afternoon tidying.”

His hands find your hips again; this time, he lifts you fully, scooping you up into his arms and setting you onto the enchanted beside him. Then, he drops to his knees, situating himself between your spread legs and surveying the evidence of his pleasure, still dripping from your thighs. He  _tsks_  in mock-displeasure, running his forefinger between your legs and catching his spend on the tip. He lifts it before his eyes, rubbing it between forefinger and thumb, before heaving a resigned sigh. 

“Well, we cleaned up the garden, didn’t we?” he asks, his eye glinting with mischief. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t clean you up, too, before we left.”

And he bows his head between your legs, and takes you into his mouth. The lave of his tongue is delicious, delightful—your head falls back against the wall behind the bench, your face lifted to the starstrand.


	6. Cock (Julian x Aredhel)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don’t let the prompt fool you—this is not really kinky at all unless being soft and supportive to Julian counts as a kink. But I have always wanted to rewrite the desk scene in the library (in the early part of the game) with Julian and Aredhel, so I tried to do that… it just ended up being like, 70% feelings and 30% smut. Oops. Tomorrow will be kinkier, I promise. 

 

Every since Asra left, sneaking out the back door in the dead of night, Aredhel’s life had been turned upside down. For three years she had seen so little of Vesuvia, confined mostly to the apothecary and the apartment above. Asra insists he does not think her fragile, nor weak, but wherever it is he goes, he does not let her follow. She is left behind, at home, scowling to herself (resentful towards Asra, but missing him dreadfully all the same) and longing for the day when she is strong enough to have adventures of her own.

Whatever Asra thinks of her (her vulnerability, her frailty)  it no longer matters: he cannot hold her back. Courted by the Countess, Aredhel had left Mooney’s Apothecary six days ago and hardly been back since. And all matters of employment and future executions aside, she has seen _so much_  in those six days. The splendor of the palace, lit up against the night sky as she’d crossed the bridge over the moat with Portia; the art that lines its the palace’s halls, technically astounding no matter how tasteless Aredhel had found their subject matter. Nadia had gifted her two new outfits of the most finely spun silk she had ever touched, and had not batted an eyelid. In other words—such  _wealth_  she had seen, such opulence! Never had she dreamt of such luxury. 

But none of that—the courtly manners, the beauty of the veranda at night overlooking the gardens, the cool sheets of her bed at the palace (softer than most of the clothing she owns!), the taste of such richly and expertly prepared food, the promise of riches if she accomplishes the task Nadia has set before her—absolutely  _none of it_  compares to the treasure of Julian’s smile, brilliant with victory and hopeful for the first time since Aredhel met him when he locates the brass key on his old desk and sweeps her into his arms.

Quicker than she could resist he had looped an arm behind her knees, the other around her shoulders, and scooped her right off her feet. Drawn so near to him, his smile is all the more alluring… and is it her imagination, or does it curl into something more lascivious as he leans his head closer, his eye gleaming with delight…?

But Aredhel—Aredhel can only look at him, even though she can feel desire hot in her chest. It would be so easy, to close the space between them, to take his mouth into hers… but she doesn’t—she can’t. She should be better than that. She wants to treat him better than that. 

Her fingers wind in his collar, and she tugs on the thin, white fabric gently as she avoids his gaze. Her mouth—useless, indecisive—hangs open, speechless, while she searches for the words. To let him down, gently, that he might let  _her_ down, gently, back onto her feet. 

The problem is, well. She doesn’t really want to. But it feels like the responsible thing to do—maybe the kindest thing to do, too, after last night on the docks, and this morning in the tavern.

While she searches, reluctant, for the words that will make her intentions clear, Julian’s face falls. The brilliance of it dims; his expression darkens. Before Aredhel chet’s put so much as a word he eases her back onto her feet, clearing his throat and crossing his arms over his chest. His eye fixes on the floor, unable to look her in the face.

“You’re mad at me.”

It is a statement, not a question. And it’s  _awful_ , the way he says it: resigned as though he should have expected it, as though he deserves it. Aredhel wants to reach for him, to reassure him… but the whole reason this came about was because Julian had seen the frustration on her face, wanting to touch him, equally unwilling to cross that bridge just yet. For a second time, she resists, and wraps her arms around her own waist, her body mirroring Julian’s.

“I’m not mad at you, Julian,” Aredhel says, quietly, and though she is resolved not to touch him, her body does swing closer to his.

Julian huffs, a disenchanted sound. “You’re not, huh. Even after everything I’ve put you through? You know, there is such a thing as being too forgiving.”

“What am I supposed to be mad at you for?” she asks, crossing her arms a little tighter. “For what—for ‘ _dumping_ ’ me?”

That gets his attention. He turns his face to hers, blinking owlishly. “Well, uhh… yyyesss?” But he recovers quickly, hiding his confusion with a grimace. “I mean, I don’t know what your experience with relationships is like, but break-ups do tend to leave at least one party with bruised feelings. …Unless you weren’t particularly interested in me to begin with.”

“Of course I’m interested,” Aredhel scoffs. She would have thought that was more than evident based on the little tryst they had shared in the community theater. “But that’s not—the breakup, I don’t blame you for that, not really. For pushing me away. I wish you hadn’t, and I hope you don’t again, but I don’t blame you.”

Julian’s answering bark of laughter rings out in the empty library, a hollow and mirthless sound. “Then who is to blame?  _You?_ ”

“No one!” Aredhel insists, her face screwing up in frustration. She sighs, and turns to lean back against one of the bookshelves, the wood digging against her shoulder blades. Why must it always be about blame with him? About guilt? Then again, with the Count’s murder dangling like a sword over his head for the past three years, Aredhel cannot really fault him for being so preoccupied with matters of responsibility. 

The atmosphere in the room feels so thick, so tense; Aredhel knows her next words will bear such weight. She must choose them wisely.

“The last few days… they’ve been kind of intense with us, haven’t they?”

The kiss on the doorstep comes to mind—the fiery passion that had filled her up at once when his lips met hers, almost too forceful and bright to believe—but she does not speak of it. Julian’s eye meets hers only briefly; wordlessly, he nods in agreement. 

“I… am sorry, for that,” Aredhel says. Julian’s eye widens, and he opens his mouth like he’s going to argue, but Aredhel cuts him off with a firm look. She keeps her eyes trained to his face, watching for any reaction; the task is made easier by the fact that Julian tears his eyes away, fixing them on the floor in a look of dejection as she continues. “It can’t have been easy for you. Everything is happening so fast, and… I know the timing is all wrong, and with the guards chasing you I’m sure a romance is the last thing on your mind.”

At that, Julian cannot resist interjecting: “It’s never the _last_ thing,” he says, dryly, raising an eye brow. 

Aredhel laughs. “Fair.” Her shoulders loosen; some of the tension goes out of her crossed arms.  _Why does he put me at ease?_ “But the point is, you came here for answers. And more than anything else, I want to help you find them. But just now, when you found the key… I wanted very badly to kiss you.”

Longing and confusion commingle in his gaze when his eye meets hers. “You—you did?”

“Yeah, I did,” Aredhel replies, a wistful smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “I often want to. Kiss you, I mean, or touch you, but I… I want to help you, more than I want any of those other things. I want you to be safe. To prove your innocence, so you can be free. And if the best thing for that is putting all of  _this_ ,” she says, gesturing vigorously at the space between them, “on hold until it’s settled, I want to respect that. If that’s what you want, what you need—”

“It’s not!” The volume of his rejection shocks even Julian himself. He flushes, sheepish, and bites his lip. Softly, he adds, “I don’t know what I need. But pulling away from you… that’s not what I want.”

As if to drive the point home, Julian takes a half-step closer. Aredhel’s breath slows. She watches as he sways, leaning towards her. His arms unfold, possessed of a new purpose—might he reach for her again?

A piercing screech from the window prevents her from finding out—or precipitates the same touch she had been anticipating to begin with. With a start and two quick strides Julian had wrapped Aredhel in his arms once more, ushering her into one of the shadowy alcoves between the book cases. He pins her to the wall, physically shielding her body with his own, and he swallows nervously as he peers over his shoulder. 

So close to him—their bodies nearly touching—it seems pointless, to hold herself back. She should restrain herself, she knows, but despite that, Aredhel reaches for him, placing her hand gently on his chest, just below his collar. 

“Julian. It’s okay. It was just one of the birds out in the garden.”

His head snaps around, anxiety still written in the tight lines of his face… but then he exhales, slow and shaky, his head drooping so that it nearly kisses against Aredhel’s, his auburn curls tickling her forehead. “You’re right, just a bird. Old habits, you know.” He flashes an embarrassed grin. “Sorry.”

Then his grin turns to a grimace of anguish;  he groans, pain twisting his expression as he closes his eye. “About everything. I’m so sorry, Aredhel. I never wanted to hurt you, but I’m sure last night that’s exactly what I did—”

“Julian,” Aredhel answers in soft admonishment, putting an abrupt end to his verbal self-flagellation. Her hand rises from his chest to his face, cupping his cheek. “I’m not mad about last night. It’s water under the bridge—forget it, okay? I forgive you.”

He laughs, bitterly. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she tells him, grinning. “Though if anything, you should be apologizing for making me worry.”

“You were worried about me?” Julian asks, incredulous. “Even after I was so cold to you?”

“I knew you didn’t mean it,” Aredhel answers. “You’re not as good of a liar as you think you are. But when you left me at the shop, you looked so miserable. I was so worried you’d drink too much and hurt yourself, or that you wouldn’t have anyone to talk to, or that you wouldn’t be careful—that the guards would catch you…”

“Then I’m doubly sorry,” Julian replies, leaning his face into her touch. “For breaking up with you,  _and_  for making you worry about me.”

“Apology accepted,” Aredhel replies brightly, but when Julian’s hand comes to cover hers she freezes, eyes lidding when he pries it from his face and turns his head to press a kiss to her palm, his eyes fluttering shut. He’s still looking at her warmly when he pulls away, and Aredhel has to clear her throat, straighten her posture to remind herself of her discipline. Of her  _spine._

“But Julian, where does that leave us?” she asks, tilting her head. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but this—right now, kissing my hand—I don’t know how long I can keep you at arm’s length, if you insist on doing things like that.”

 _And looking so lovely while you do them._  His dark lashes, his high cheekbones….

Julian releases a shuddering exhale, and admits, “I don’t know.” He shakes his head and lowers his eyes, but even as he avoids Aredhel’s gaze he takes her hands in his, squeezing them gently. “I don’t know what I was thinking last night. Aredhel, I want you—whether or not I am innocent, whether or not I’ll be executed in two week’s time. But how can I even ask that of you? To care for me, when there’s every chance you’ll lose me—”

“I already care for you,” she interjects, meekly, looking up into his face from beneath her lashes.

Julian colors, swallows; continues: “I’m a mess, Aredhel. If you didn’t realize it last night I’m sure you did this morning. I don’t deserve your help—I  _really_  don’t deserve your affection. But still, unworthy as I am, I can’t help but be drawn towards you…”

His eye meets hers again, his gaze searching—for something—for what? Reassurance, confidence, safe harbor?

“Aredhel. What do you want?”

She knows the answer immediately: she wants to kiss him, just as badly as she had when he had found the key on his desk and swept her into his arms. She wastes no time on words. Her hands slip from his grip and frame his face. As she pulls it down to hers, she watches his eye go wide in surprise before she closes her own and presses her mouth to his.

_‘Aredhel. What do you want?’ You, I want you, I want nothing but you: kept safe, free at last, unburdened and in love with me._

And if there was any lingering doubt in Aredhel’s mind that Julian wanted her, too, it is swiftly silenced by the pressure of Julian’s arm around her waist, pulling her close, and his fingers coming gently ‘round the back of her neck as he tilts his head and kisses her eagerly. Her thumbs smooth down his sideburns; the tip of his nose presses against her cheek as they kiss and she can hear the unsteadiness of his breathing, the way his exhale shudders through him. 

“ _I want you_ ,” Julian breathes, a whisper rasped between their mouths. “Aredhel, I’m so confused, so mixed up—I don’t know if I’m guilty, don’t know what I did or didn’t do. Half the time I don’t even know whether or not I should turn myself in anyway. Don’t know up from down.”  There’s a yearning in his eye that she’s never seen before: wild and unrestrained. He lifts a hand to hold her face, and brushes his lips against hers. “But I  _do_  want you—I don’t know much else, but I know that.”

He presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth, leather-clad fingers gently guiding her head back as he trails his mouth down her chin, beneath her jaw, over her throat. Aredhel is far away—she is hardly paying attention. ‘I want you,’ he says, and she wants him, too—consequences be damned. Eyes fixed on the ceiling, the heat of a flush creeping up the sides of her neck, she asks him, “Here?”

Julian freezes, his lips pursed against her pulse. He only pulls away to regard her with an uncertain look. “What?”

“Do you want me  _here,_  now?” she asks, watching him carefully. To make perfectly clear, she adds, “In the library?”

The uncertainty melts from his face—something clicks, and his confusion yields to a surprise that then warms to something tortured and hungry. His cheeks color, and he pulls at his bottom lip with his teeth. “Yes,” he admits. When his fingers come to brush along the column of her throat, his touch is light, hesitant, like he’s not quite sure he’s allowed. “Would you give yourself to me here?”

She nods—not ignorant of the risk inherent in what she is proposing, but willing to take her chances all the same. 

Asra had told her: ‘ _Be careful with Doctor Devorak_.’ He has said, ‘ _He’s not a good man._ ’ But all of Asra’s repeated warnings have done little good. With Julian she feels more alive than all the three years she spent under Asra’s care combined; she has become more attuned to her heartbeat, for it beats so hard and so fast when Julian is near. It’s probably true that what she is doing is unwise. But however impulsive it may be, being with him feels right. 

“Yes.”

Yes, she will give herself to him here… and anywhere else, for as long as he is with her, for as long as he wants her. 

Julian’s breath hitches, a choked laugh as though he can’t quite believe his luck. He holds Aredhel’s gaze a moment longer… his tongue swipes along his bottom lip. Now that it’s come to it, he looks uncertain. Like a cat that knows not what to do with a bird once it has caught it between its teeth. Slowly, he cups a hand around her chin and leans down to kiss her, languid, tender. 

‘ _Be careful with Doctor Devorak_.’ How could Asra have ever expected her to keep away from him? He kisses Aredhel gently. His hands lower to her hips and grasp at her skirt, and guides her away from the wall, out of the alcove and back towards his desk. His kiss grows hungrier with every step he takes. He only releases her waist when the back of his thighs meet the desktop; his arm swings behind him to support him, shoving heavy, ancient tomes from the desk, sending parchment drawings scattering as he guides Aredhel on top of the desk, on top of him, pulling her into his lap and sealing his mouth over hers.

It is the first time he has kissed her, Aredhel thinks, and held nothing back. At the apothecary, he had hid behind his impetuousness. At Mazelinka’s, there had been the fear of being overheard, or worse—walked in on. Even that night he had been wistful. And the day after, though he had held her with longing and kissed her eagerly, still he had been holding back, the words ‘ _we really do need to talk_ ’ hanging over his head, tying his hands. 

But for now—maybe only for this moment—Julian has abandoned his sense of self-restraint. They have declared themselves to one another, and Julian seems eager to consummate that declaration. His hands squeeze her thighs, tease the hem of her dress higher. They stroke down her back and press firmly at the small of her back, drawing her close. His fingers are restless, caressing her arms, her breasts, gliding down her stomach—his body sways with the kiss, at times bending so close over her that Aredhel has to fist her hands in his coat to hold herself upright, at others drawing her so far over him he is practically lying on his back.

Aredhel can’t really blame him. They had gotten lucky earlier, with Nadia, but the encounter had only make clear the delicacy of Julian’s situation, how quickly things could take a turn for the worse. How high the chances of failure—that he might be caught before he ever finds his answers—and how precious (as a consequence) every moment Aredhel is able to enjoy alone with him. The truth is, she is just as eager;  Aredhel knows that if she does not give herself to him now, a second chance is not guaranteed. And as vulnerable as they are in the library, there’s more then ten sets of locks on the door—it’s certainly less uncomfortable than the idea of doing so in Mazelinka’s bed, a crude way to return her generous hospitality.

But then Julian groans into Aredhel’s mouth, and presses his hips up against hers—and all thoughts of potential exposure and discomfort scatter at the feel of his cock, half-hard already, seeking her heat even through the clothing that separates them. She can only gasp in surprise, and delight; she had not felt him so keenly in the theater. This hint of what is to come only makes her want him all the more. Her desire overwhelms her, leaves her mind blank, dizzy, the roar of her pulse the only thing that grounds her, a drumbeat that marches onward carrying her closer to him. She cradles his face in her hands, and licks her way into his mouth as she rolls her hips to his. The friction is tantalizing—her anticipation builds, and she can feel herself slickening already, her body eager to take him—and Julian moans, low in the back of his throat as he circles his hips in time with Aredhel’s.

Her fingers rise to the buttons of his uniform, nimble fingers making deft work of releasing them from their holes. Once it lies open she does not even bother to push it from his shoulders, opting instead to untuck his undershirt from his trousers then slip her hands beneath the hem. Despite the heat of their kiss, Julian’s skin is delightfully cool to the touch. Her hands glide up his chest, wrap around his back, holding him just as tightly as he holds her. Julian presses himself into her touch, nearly breathless.

And then—just as she had two nights ago—she raises her hand to his shoulder, and pushes him back against the desk, pinning him to the wood. He watches, eye lidded as she pushes the hem of his loose undershirt up around his armpits, then ducks her head to take his nipple between her teeth and tug. Julian gasps; whines, then, when she releases him and follows the line of his hair down his stomach with her mouth, pressing kisses all the way. She saves the sweetest—the most tender of her kisses—for the side of his stomach, just over his hip, where he had taken her wound as his own, bleeding openly before the curse had closed it. He shivers beneath her kiss. 

Satisfied with the attention she has lavished upon him, Aredhel straightens. She places a hand over his sternum to steady herself—she can feel the excited pace of his heartbeat under her palm—the rolls her hips against his again.

“ _Mmm._ ” The sound of a muffled cry, trapped behind Julian’s closed lips. He cracks an eye to look at her, slides his hands up to squeeze her thighs as she rises and falls above him. “Aredhel…”

But his eyes close again when she quickens the pace of her thrusting, and his head falls back against the desk with an audible thunk. One of his hands combs through his hair, gripping tightly and giving it a firm tug as his mouth falls open in a weak sound of pleasure. His other grips her thigh all the tighter. Behind her, Aredhel can feel his heels planting into the desk, his knees bending; he uses the leverage to meet each of her thrusts, groaning, red-faced.

(He should be a little quieter, maybe—the door has many locks, but that’s no indication of how thick it is, how sound-proof—but they are so lovely, each of his little pleasure noises, that even for the sake of caution Aredhel cannot ask him to stop.)

(But as good as they sound now,  _imagine_ —a shudder of delight runs down Aredhel’s spine as she does—imagine how lovely he’ll sound when he is buried within her, when she is warm and wet around him, when each rock of her hips rewards him not with the friction of his trousers but drives him deeper inside of her?)

Julian whines as she slows her grinding, but gasps, arches his back off the desk and towards her touch as she runs her fingers down his chest, raking her nails lightly against his skin. Tips tickle the hair leading down his stomach, and then hook beneath the sash tied around his waist, giving the fabric a gentle tug.

“Julian, can I—do you want to—?”

“Yes,” he replies, at once, that one syllable swelled with such tremulous relief. Aredhel sits back on his thighs, seeking the closures of his trousers, her fingers fumbling in their eagerness. Julian sits up and kisses her, sloppy and impatient, before his mouth trails across her cheek, presses hot against her ear: “I ache for you. Do not be gentle with me.”

‘ _I ache for you_.’ What a load of crock. He talks like the men in those paperbacks full of seedy stories that one can find in the market, if one knows who to ask. Aredhel is almost tempted to laugh in his face… but that would feel cruel, because— _absolute hogwash_  though it seems to be—Aredhel thinks the sentiment is wholly sincere. That’s just Julian, dramatic as usual. And if she’s being honest with herself, her reaction has a lot less to do with Julian than it has to do with herself. She has never been spoken to like this, like she is the heroine of some silly, tacky romance; the most surprising thing about it (the real reason she’d like to laugh it off) is that, much to her embarrassment and delight, she likes it.

It’s so corny, but it makes her feel so stupidly warm, and wanted.

Still working blindly at his trousers, she turns her head to take his mouth back into hers. A savage kind of kiss: teeth clacking, lips swelling. They only part when Aredhel’s fingers free the last of the catches; Julian gasps, and Aredhel wastes no time, pulling him free of his underwear and leaving him exposed. She presses one last bruising kiss to his lips then gives his shoulder a pointed shove, guiding him onto his back. Only then, when he is stretched before her—red-faced, lips slick, breathing hard—does she look at him.

And all of a sudden, his earlier words— _I ache for you_ —come to mind; she’d thought them so silly, but oh, she gets it, now. One glance at his cock and all she wants to do is take it inside of her. She goes wet between the legs; she can feel herself clench, tightening in arousal and delight at just the thought of sinking down around him. His cock is  _gorgeous_ , standing tall and flushed, curving slightly towards his stomach. Despite how badly she wants him, she cannot help but reach for it; she traces her fingers lightly along his shaft before closing a fist around the tip, thumbing over the head, smearing the precum that leaks at her touch around its circumference.

Below, presses the back of his hand to his mouth, whimpering against it; he watches her, his eye lidded, until a wave of pleasure rocks him and leaves his abdomen clenched so tightly that his shoulders lift off the desk, eyes shut.

And that’s it— _look at him!_ —how can Aredhel keep him waiting? She gathers her skirts and lifts them around her waist, reaching between her legs to push her underwear aside as she lifts her hips over him. As soon as Julian feels her warmth press against him his eye flies open. One of his hands creep up her thigh; the other takes the hem of her skirts out of her hands, lifting it, holding the fabric above her stomach so he can watch. Aredhel has not moved—has not taken him within her yet—but Julian moans low at just the sight of her poised over him.

But when Aredhel begins to sink around him, his eye finds hers; she cannot hold it for long. Her breath hitches at the dull press of him, first against her and then inside her. She can hear the dull thunk of his head hitting the desk’s surface again, and the half-muffled groan he makes, not-yet-satisfied, his hand tight on her thigh as though he is holding himself back from rutting against her, driving himself further into her—he lets her set the pace. Slowly—shuddering—mind blissfully vacant, possessed of nothing but the feel of him entering her and the overwhelming tenderness she feels for him—she lowers herself around him, releasing a low unsteady moan of her own when she is pressed fully against him.

“Aredhel,” Julian breathes, squeezing her thigh for emphasis. “You feel— _oh_ , you feel  _wonderful_ —”

“AH! Milady, finished up so soon? That’s a surprise!”

Before Aredhel is able to finish cursing their luck Julian has already sprung into action: he lifts her out of his lap and draws her tight to his chest, curling himself around her (shielding her body with his own) as he swings them both off the desk. But before he has her back on her feet, she sees it happening, as if in slow motion: six large tomes, big enough to make a racket, tumbling towards the floor. 

Julian is tugging her wrist—“ _Come on, Aredhel, get out of the open!_ ”—urging her back into the shadows of the alcoves, but her eyes are focussed only on the books. There will be no use in hiding if the sound of them hitting the floor betrays that the room is indeed occupied. She lurches out of Julian’s arms, back towards the desk, but his grip is too strong, and the books so fast, already well beyond her grasp.

_This is all my fault, I talked him into this ludicrous idea, we weren’t being careful—he is going to get caught because of me—the Countess is going to hang him and it will be all my fault—!_

Then, the books freeze.

Aredhel blinks. Is she so hysterical—in such firm refusal of the danger they have found themselves in—that she is beginning to see things? Julian is still ushering her back into the shadows, oblivious to the mild panic that has seized her. In the hallway, Portia drops the keys, makes excuses… but Aredhel is still looking only at the books, hovering a foot above the ground. And then, she feels it—the faint threads of magic running between her outstretched hand and the leather-bound tomes, the way they tug on her power, gravity fighting against her. 

It makes sense. A levitation spell. Very handy, really. 

The thing is, Asra has never taught her any magic like this before.

Pain behind her eyes—the books drop a hands length closer to the ground before she tightens her grip on that fraying magic, eyes watering. She grits her teeth and focuses on the web of magic she has cast; slowly, with great concentration, she lowers the books silently the rest of the way to the floor. When they are settled she holds her hand up in wonder. It’s only magic, yes, and far from the most remarkable magic she’s ever seen. Asra is brilliant, after all, and she is only an apprentice. But how had she cast a spell she had never learned?

“Aredhel, we need to leave.  _Now_.”

The hiss of his voice barely cuts through her confusion, but his hand on her wrist does the trick; he pulls her close and wraps an arm around the small of her back, half-carrying her back into the alcoves. Once there he backs her against the wall, shielding her ( _again_ ) with his body, even as he tucks himself back into his pants, his face beet red.

He passes a glance over his shoulder at the door, tucking in his shirt and starting to fumble with the buttons of his coat. “Aredhel, when she opens that door—you need to hide. Promise me you’ll stay hidden. I won’t have you caught in my mess.”

Still so wrapped up in the mystery of the magic she had pulled out of thin air ( _out of the vacant space of her memory, from all the past she has forgotten? But why now?_ ) it takes Aredhel a moment to understand him. When her brain starts to catch up with her ears, though, her brow furrows. 

“Julian, what are you talking about?”

He turns back to her, swallowing hard. In all the time she’s spent with him—running through the city from the guards, fleeing the Rowdy Raven—Aredhel thinks he’s never looked so frightened. His hands come to her biceps, holding them firmly.

“She’ll be too busy arresting me to notice you,” Julian says, his eye wide and anxious. “Promise me, Aredhel—promise me you won’t get involved.”

Get involved? He has to be joking—as if she were not already deeply involved! 

“No.”

“‘No,’ you won’t get involved? Or—”

“I’m not leaving you,” Aredhel says, ducking out of his arms and taking a step closer to the center of the room. She racks her brain for ideas; there has to be something. She’s a bit worn from the levitation spell—though useful, it had kind of been like a kick in the gut—but maybe,  _maybe_  she can pull off a strong enough Nevermind Me—

“Aredhel! What are you doing?”

She barely glances at him over her shoulder. “Stopping you from doing something foolish.”

“Are you kidding me? You’ve got to be joking,” Julian says, his whisper pitching higher in tone and more desperate. “Aredhel, I’m a dead man, there’s no sense in you being caught with me.” He flashes another look towards the door, then lurches out after her, cutting off her progression into the center of the room and trying to crowd her back in the shadows. “Please,  _please_ , get out of sight. Let me do this for you.”

She side-steps him, deftly, but comes close to whisper vehemently, “Do you expect me to step aside and let you turn yourself in?” She begins to rub her hands together, trying to call the magic to her fingers. “If you get back in the shadows, I know a spell that might hold long enough for me to distract the Countess and get her to leave with me before she notices you. I’ll come back for you as soon as I can.”

“And _in the meantime?_ ” Julian says, gesturing towards her with his palms up in supplication. “What if she gets suspicious? What if it doesn’t work and she sees me anyway?”

“It will work,” Aredhel asserts, sounding far more confident than she feels. But if Julian is going to insist on falling on the sword otherwise, magic may be the only option she has—it has to work. “And Portia is the only one who has keys to this room. I will try to let her know you are waiting here—she will come back for you, or I will come back later, and help get you out of here—”

“No!” He closes the space between them, holding her face in his hands and looking at her imploringly. “Aredhel, I won’t let you risk your safety like that for me. If Nadia finds out, if something goes wrong, she’ll hang you, too.”

“Well, I’m not okay with the idea of letting her hang you, just to save my own skin. I can think of nothing more despicable,” she insists, stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes flicker briefly to the door as another lock clicks—how many are left?—but then she turns back to Julian, a fierce determination on her face.

“You wanted me, right? Well this is me, with you.” She uncrosses her arms, slipping one of her hands into his, lacing their fingers and squeezing gently. “We’re in this together, now,” she insists, voice firm. “We either hide together or hang together—your choice, Devorak.”

His mouth falls open in shock. In disbelief, he asks, “You’re really not going to leave me?”

She shakes her head, ‘ _no_ ,’ giving his hand another squeeze. 

For a moment, he looks like he’s going to beg her again… but then, with a look of defeat and then a grimace, he says, “Fine.” He casts one last glance at the door, before he takes her hands in his and ushers her into the shadows. “Let’s get out of sight.”


	7. Praise Kink (Julian x GN!MC)

“Get on your knees.”

Julian doesn’t need telling twice. He drops faster than a puppet with cut strings, knees thunking against the wood floor. The leather off his boots cushions the impact somewhat, but it still leaves a pleasant ache in his joints as he brings his hands palm-down on his thighs and looks up at the beloved face above him. 

“Very good, Julian. Eager tonight, are you?”

“Yes.” There’s no point in lying when the evidence of his eagerness is so clear. His trousers are unfastened, his cock free. He had been teased, albeit briefly, but that was enough to leave him almost painfully hard, cheeks flushed, legs shaking. Even now, beneath his weight, his calves tremor in excitement. 

“Will you be good, then, in your eagerness? …Close your eyes.”

Julian shudders in delighted anticipation of this, their latest game of trust and obedience. He closes his eyes as instructed. 

“Open your mouth?”

That’s almost not fair—his mouth is soon to full of a choked moan to open, his teeth around his lip, murmur-groaning at all the possibilities, what next might find its way into his mouth if he leaves it open, tongue ready to receive, ‘ _will I get to taste?’_

“Julian. Open.”

A hand comes forward and tightens around his chin, guiding his jaw; Julian opens his mouth, licks his lips. 

That earns him a groan from above. “Mmm, Julian. Do you have any idea how good you look, eyes closed, waiting so patiently?  _Licking your lips?_ …Do it again, please?”

‘ _Please_.’ Julian knew he must have been doing well if he was getting a ‘please.’ He made a show of licking his lips, dragging the tip of his tongue long the top. As he took his bottom lip between his teeth and let it slide free, wet, he heard another pleased groan above him; fingers found his scalp, sunk into his hair and tugged gently at the roots, tilting Julian’s head back. 

“Gods, Julian. You’ve got such a gorgeous mouth. Do you remember when we first met and I couldn’t stop looking at it? You’d be trying to flirt with me and I’d be oblivious I wouldn’t even notice, so fixated on the curve of your lips, wondering what they tasted like…”

“Put something in it,” Julian rasps. “See what it feels like.”

A low chuckle in response. “You  _are_  eager.”

“Wanna be good for you,” Julian breathes against the darkness, his eyes still squeezed shut. He twists his head hard enough to have the fingers in his hair tightening their grip, the hand around his chin gripping him firmer. 

“ _Tsk_. You’re doing so well already, Julian. Just the sight of you with your cock out and throbbing between your legs, mouth open, ready to take what I give you… you look so good.”

The thumb around his chin comes to pad instead at Julian’s lower lip; Julian stretches his mouth wide before the command eve comes— _“open up.”_

Fingers tighten in his hair as his chin is released. Eyes still closed, Julian slides his tongue out of his mouth, a landing strip for whatever may come his way. Two finger pads barely brush the flat of his tongue before Julian is moaning, curling his tongue around them and surging forward (despite  _and_  because of the tight clench of the hand in his hair) to take them into his mouth. 

Julian can taste himself on them, from the earlier teasing that had left him so flushed and aroused. Hint of precum mixed with  _their_  sweat (beloved, holy) and the last bits of the dinner they had shared. 

“You’re doing so well, Julian,” comes the silky praise from above. “So good, the way you suck my fingers. Be thorough; I don’t want to see a bit of them left dry when I pull them out.”

A tremble runs through the whole of Julian’s body, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. He can feel his cock twitch enthusiastically against his thigh. Fingers push further into his mouth, close to the back of his throat. Julian stills, breathes deeply through his nose, then slides his mouth along the length of them; he takes each finger to the knuckle, hollowing his cheeks around them, sucking obscenely. 

Then the voice speaks again, and Julian’s mind goes vacant of all else but desire:

“That’s it, coat them well… you’ll want it, where they’re going next.”


	8. Blood (Julian x Aredhel)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian rails Aredhel on her period. Yes, you read that right. Also, past reference to Julian getting his redwings. (I'm sorry, I have no excuse but it is after all Kinktober.)

Aredhel almost never allows Julian to use his ‘gift’ to heal her. That had not stopped him, in the beginning, from offering to “help” with every little ailment: a cut finger, a bruise, a pulled muscle. Every time he had offered, Aredhel could only think of Portia’s words: “ _ That sounds like my brother, alright. Always taking on the burdens of others, then lamenting how heavy the load.”  _ It’s one thing, when she’s bleeding out from a vampire eel bite and won’t recover without his magic; it’s quite another when the wound Julian is trying to coax from her is hardly more than an inconvenience. After all, her body repairs itself too— _ naturally _ , just not so quickly.

She wants to protect him: she wants to lessen Julian’s burden, not increase its weight. No, there are good uses for Julian’s ‘gift,’ and times when he’s just a tide looking for a sharp cliff to dash itself against, and she won’t be that—not now. 

There is, however, one exception she’ll make.

The cramps have left her too sore to climb on top of him, as she often does; instead, Julian is knelt between her legs, pinning her knees to her shoulders. The room is filled with the sounds he makes driving into her: little hisses of satisfaction, pitched cries, as though even he is surprised by the intensity of his pleasure, and the wetter-than-usual sounds of him thrusting into her, lewd and obscene enough that she had once been ashamed of them before Julian had talked her out of it. 

‘ _ I want you, _ ’ he had said, but she had not believed him. The shame a shadow she drew over her body, taught to her by other lovers, finally cast off when Julian had sunk between her knees. ‘ _ I’m a doctor. Do you think a little blood is enough to scare me off, darling? _ ’ And when his tongue had licked along her lips—when his mouth had puckered around her and he had sucked on her clit with all the same enthusiasm (if not more) than when she was not on her monthly bleeding, it had felt so  _ good. _ Her thighs and her stomach had gone tight, not with cramps but with pleasure; her toes had curled in the carpet after no more than a few strokes. After she had come (just as she usually did when he ate her out: with her hands fisting his hair, her hips bucking up against his mouth) he had left a trail of red kisses on the inside of her thighs. When he had favored her after with his trademark look—his signature lopsided, self-satisfied grin—Julian was so bloody between the teeth he looked like he’d been punched in the mouth.

That was months past; now, Julian doesn’t even have to ask. They keep a towel within reach to protect the bedsheets, and a bowl of water on the bedside to wipe each other down after. 

And, if the pain is particularly intense—when it leaves her bent around the cycle inside of her, curled up like a fiddlehead fern—he brings his bare hand over the bloat in her abdomen and steals the soreness from within her.

“Ahh—’Red, that  _ smarts _ ,” he hisses, teeth clenched as the sigil glows on his throat and lights up the planes of his face in a brilliant white blush. His abdomen clenches, and his head bows; he breathes heavy over her breasts before pressing a trail of kisses up her sternum. Then, groaning, he stretches, forehead kissing her jawline as he rocks his hips against hers, rocks into her, into the great mess of her. Already his groin feels slippery against her. If he straightened—if Aredhel has enough sense of self to come down from the cloud of pleasure she is drifting upon and look at him—she might see the smattering of blood and tissue turning his skin pink.

He likes the pain, she knows; she suspects by now there’s a part of him that likes the mess, too. Honestly she could take it or leave it. Aredhel reasons: she’s  _ twenty five.  _ That’s got to be—what?—at least a hundred past monthly blessings, and she has survived them just fine without Julian near to dull the ache which comes naturally with each succession of moons. That, and the fact that half her work in the apothecary had to do with fertility treatments, increasing and curbing it both. It doesn’t feel particularly transgressive, and though she appreciates the relief it often provides, she doesn’t really need it.

What does get her going is just how  _ wildly _ Julian fucks her like this. When she’s too sore to ride him, when the stinging pain he pulls from her blends with his pleasure, turning both into a heady cocktail that leaves him almost feral from the first sip. He fucks her hard to sate the ache within him, the slip-slide of her blood spattering his thighs and running down his legs.

She had already come once, earlier, when he had rubbed her to her finish, smearing blood and natural secretions around her cunt, painting her lips red, the pad of his thumb delightfully slick when it circled her clit. Now, she is chasing her second peak. Julian pulls her towards it with each rut of his hips. He lifts his face from the crook of her neck, and plants a hand each on the back of her thighs, pressing them to her chest once more, using the leverage deepen his thrusts. Though he is not rough (he is never,  _ ever _ rough with her, unless Aredhel asks very nicely, and promises all the best kinds of aftercare in return) the pace of his fucking quickens, the staccato  _ smack-splatter-smack _ as he drives himself into her.

“Aredhel,” he breathes, and if she were not already so intimately acquainted with Julian she might not recognize the shape of her name on his mouth, riding on a pleasured keen that makes the sound of it nearly disappear entirely. “ _ Red _ , I don’t think I can last much longer—”

“S’okay,” she huffs, and in his next thrust drives her hips upwards against his, taking him deeper. He cries out, and his brow furrows; his teeth clench, as though it is taking all his concentration not to lose it right then and there. But, “I came already,” she reassures him, “earlier, in the beginning—”

At that, he does stop. His eyes widen. “What, when I was fingering you?”

She nods.

“But not since?”

‘ _ Not since. _ ’ As if once was not sufficient. This time, Aredhel does not nod, but her lack of response is all the response Julian needs, really. With a click of his tongue he snakes his hand between her thighs and parts her folds again.

He traces a firm spiral on her swollen clit at the same time as he sinks back inside of her.

Aredhel muffles her moan against the back of her hand. Smooth glide of Julian drawing in and out of her, though not quite so regular as the energetic pace he had set before. No matter; he knows how to touch her, and his thumb is pleasure enough. But the sweeter the cries he pulls out of her, the greater her pleasure grows, the more he begins to fidget between her legs: adjusting the width of his knees, the angle of his hips. His thrusting grows more and more irregular. Soon, it’s enough to distract her ( _ is he uncomfortable? _ ) but before she can crack an eye to check on him he drives his hips  _ just  _ so, and she’s left shuddering and clinging to Julian’s shoulders as the world goes out from under her.

(When she comes back to herself—when the pleasure ebbs just enough for her brain to regain the use of language—she’ll put two and two together. That fidgeting: he’d been searching for that spot within her, the one that would make her writhe. It had only required some experimenting, trial and error. As Julian would call it, “ _ science, _ ” a tool wielded to guide him when experience could not.)

It isn’t long, then. The rub of his thumb on her clit and the thrust of his cock within her, Aredhel’s body winds tighter and tighter, until the sweetness leaves her chest so clenched she nearly forgets to breathe. Her hips chase his: she uses what little strength she has (her spine arching against the mattress) to buck up into each of Julian’s thrusts. The solid  _ girth _ of him within her feels so  _ good _ , more than a welcome distraction—her hands fall to his hips, dragging them forward, goading him into a faster tempo until she cannot tell thrusting in from pulling out, just quick sharp thrilling slide of him inside of her. Nothing but bodily delight; she forgets to breathe. When she remembers, she draws her breath in so fast—it goes right to her head—and then she is shouting, fingers digging into Julian’s waist, listening to the sounds of his own groans as she clenches and comes around him and then settles beneath him, into the dampness of the towel beneath her.

Aredhel comes down from her second climax but Julian’s breath hitches. He brings his hand once more to the soft skin of her stomach, just above the tuft of her pubic hair. Since he had last used the curse, it’s magic had abated just enough for a hint of her cramps to return—by now, Julian knows this. (How to pace himself, how to stretch his pleasure.) The sigil on his throat flashes, and Julian stutter-hisses as that tight  _ ache _ overwhelms him once again, settles in his hips. Then three quick thrusts and he is gone—he groans and stiffens and spills, makes his one contribution to the mess they both ease into beneath them as post-coital exhaustion claims them. 

They are tired, sore, fucked-out. Even so, Julian will remember: he will make a show of reaching over her, his expression all twisted and goofy as he fumbles for the clean rag on the bedside table. He will lean his head on the cushion of her breast and press kisses to her skin, humming to her softly as he warms the cloth between his hands, then uses it to clean the evidence from between her legs. Later, when he is finished, she will do the same for him, stroke his softening cock through the warm damp rag until he is shuddering, blushing, then moaning—she will stroke him til he comes a second time and only then, when they are both clean and he is spent utterly, will Aredhel lay down to sleep beside him, her arms around his waist.


	9. Phone Sex (Julian x F!Reader, Julian x You)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phone Sex (Julian x F!Reader, Julian x You)
> 
> Modern AU. Extremely NSFW. Phone sex, masturbation, fingering, dirty talk, fem!dom vibes, creampie mention.  
> Your husband, Julian, has left you alone at home for the weekend to attend a prestigious medical conference. 
> 
> Please note: while this one-shot is told from 2nd person POV, female pronouns and female anatomy are described below.

 

The house is so quiet without Julian around. He almost never travels without you—and when he does, he’s never gone for more than a few days—but that only makes the silence in your home seem even more pronounced. The piano stands in the corner of the living room, untouched, the cover drawn over its keys. By now, ordinarily, Julian might be playing some romantic tune—or helping you with the dishes, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, bumping his hip sideways against yours or leaving a trail of dish soap bubbles on his upper lip in an absurd mockery of a mustache to make you laugh. If it had been a particular difficult day at his clinic, he might be passed out in his favorite plush armchair—a hideous piece of furniture, upholstered in the ugliest mustard-yellow print—book still opened over his stomach, his arms draped over the armrests and his fingertips brushing the floor. But even then, the house would not be so quiet; if he were sleeping, you would hear his breathing, his gentle snores.  

It’s only for a few days, you reassure yourself. That morning, Julian had flown across the country to attend a medical conference; he’d be back by the end of the weekend. And as much as you miss him, it was nothing compared to the bellyaching and agonizing he’d done before he left. He likes the idea of being apart even less than you do. But he had been invited to present a paper he’d been researching on vaccination education and outreach, and the work was  _ good— _ and important, especially these days, with people getting all sorts of crazy notions in their heads. You’ve never met a doctor with better bedside manner than Julian. He was such a good pediatrician—so empathetic (or so stubborn)—that he’d developed a knack for talking anti-vaxers and, through some god-tier level combination of patience, empathy, and humor, actually convincing them to get their kids the vaccinations they need. 

(You suspect Julian no longer believes you when you tell him, but even after being married to him for some time, you are still constantly in awe of him. You love him so much it leaves you breathless.)

What that means, though, is that it’s  _ important _ he go to the conference. Whether he believes it himself or not, you know that he has a lot to offer the other doctors in attendance. Obviously you’re biased, but you think that pretty much all doctors could stand to be a little more like Julian—a little more compassionate, a little more understanding. 

You miss him, but he’s doing good work, and he’ll be home soon.

Just as you are resolved to put it all behind you, however, your phone rings. 

The screen lights up with an image of your husband’s face. Julian had taken the photo himself, holding your phone at arm’s length, puckering his lips and trying to look sultry. He’d failed spectacularly, but the picture never fails to bring a smile. He looks so goofy—the picture is perfectly Julian, everything you love about him. You answer the call by the second ring, pressing the phone to your ear, a smile stretching your face. 

“It’s only eight where you are. Shouldn’t you still be at the opening banquet?”

Julian’s laugh comes light and merry through the phone, crossing the vast distance between you and winding into your ear to pool as a comforting, familiar warmth in your chest. 

“Such suspicion! What must I have done to deserve it?” He hums to himself. “Can’t I call my wife if I like, to make sure she is getting along alright in my absence?”

“Julian, you just left this morning.”

He laughs again. “True, true. If you must know I stepped out of the banquet a little early. Fear not, though! I’m not going to be a total recluse. I’m catching up with Dr. Satrinava over drinks in an hour.”

“There we go,” you said, approval in your tone, stretching out on the couch with the phone to your ear. “I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you. But why did you leave dinner early?”

“I told you, love: to call you.” He adds, after a pause, “And I’m not missing anything vital. Bunch of bigwigs giving self-important speeches. And the dessert was  _ meringue,  _ so it did not really provide an incentive to stick around.” 

Julian pauses, and across the white noise comes a rumbling sound, a hum of affection. “Hi, darling.”

“Hi, Julian.”

That one word is soaked with such longing:  _ darling.  _ You can’t help but wonder where he is right now: if he is standing just outside the banquet hall, or if he is standing out on the street beneath the yellow sodium light of the city, trash blowing past in a wind that jostles his auburn curls and tugs at his coat. 

“I miss you,” Julian says. The three words come out in a rush, almost a whine.

You can’t help but wonder where he is right now: ‘ _ Is he back in his hotel room?’ _ You can picture it so clearly: Julian leaning back in the desk chair, loosening his bow tie, toeing off his dress shoes before swivelling in the chair and propping his legs up on the bed, crossing them at the heel.

“Yeah?” you ask, more playfulness in your voice than you intended. “What do you miss about me?”

Julian answers with a groan that rumbling through the phone line like an oncoming stampede. You can’t feel the warmth of his breath on your neck, but just the sound Julian makes thrills you. Without entirely realizing you’re doing it, your thighs clench together; heat coils in your gut.

“ _ That, _ ” Julian answers, half accusation, half exultation. 

“What?” you ask, innocently, but this time the sultry tone you inject into your voice is no accident.

“The thing you’re doing right now, with your voice” Julian replied, his own voice strained. “How you just  _ know _ . How you turn it on.”

You tilt your head back against the sofa’s arm, a smile of delight on your face as you sink deeper into the plush cushions. He isn’t speaking, but you can still hear Julian’s breath in the silence. It’s unsteady. 

“Are you touching yourself  _ already? _ ” you ask, a faint note of amusement in your voice. 

“N-no,” comes his answer. 

Then, after a pause, “Should I be?”

You bite your lip. At the tone in his voice you can practically see his him as he was last night, before he left: knelt on the ground, staring up at you, eyes desperate… waiting for permission, or for a command, his cock dripping between his legs, even the skin of his chest flushed pink with need. 

When you laugh the sound is breathy, light from your own dawning arousal. “I didn’t know it was going to be  _ that _ kind of call.” In a casual tone of voice, as if you were discussing the weather, you ask him, “Do you have enough time?”

“That depends on how much you plan to tease me, wife.”

You smile. “Julian, that’s all I can do: tease you. I’m not there,” you say. Your ankles draw up towards your waist; your bent legs spread apart. You tuck the phone between your face and your shoulder, then slide your hands down your own body, thighs tingling as you draw your fingernails against the skin through your trousers. “I can’t touch you,” you tell him,mire quietly. “Can’t run my hands up your thighs, can’t slip my fingers under your shirt—although I’d have to untuck it first, wouldn’t I?”

“Just take it off,” Julian begged. “I want to feel your hands on me.”

“No,” you reply, stern. “Not over your head. That’s a nice shirt, Ilyushka; take it off properly, button by button. Slow…”

A huff of frustration sent the phone line crackling with static. “Fuck, I miss you so much.”

“You’ll see me soon,” you croon. “And then I’ll tease you properly… scratching my fingernails up your chest, the gentle ghost-touch of my fingers around your nipples, circling them but never touching, not until their hard—”

“I’ll hook my fingers in your belt loops,” Julian said, his voice thin with need. “I’ll drag you over me—on top of me—to show you what you’re doing to me, how I’m already swollen for you.”

He’d done it plenty of times before. It’s easy to imagine, his hands on your hips, holding you against him… the thick, hard outline of his cock against the seam of his trousers, seeking your heat. Your hands meet at your waistline, making quick work of the button and zip of your jeans.

“Are you wet already?” you ask him, the words rushed. “Stain already spreading across those pants you’re supposed to wear to meet Nazali?”

“I’m more than wet—I’m leaking. Weeping for you, darling. Can I—may I touch myself?”

You think of his dick, pre-cum dribbling down the shaft, the glisten of it in the tangled hairs of his groin. Your hand slips past the band of your unfastened pants.

“Not your cock,” you command, and Julian whimpers at the answer as you begin brushing your fingers over the fabric of your underwear, fingernails tickling your lips, legs tightening. “Your thighs—your taint,” you manage as you tease yourself, “But not your cock, not yet.”

Julian’s keening cry left your toes curling. “You should see me, darling,” he gasped, “tw— _ ha _ —twitching at just the sound of your voice.”

But you can: you close your eyes and think of the times you have lain together in bed, Julian beneath you, his cock jumping at every touch, every promise, every lewd suggestion. You think of the red, flushed shape of it; you think of the feeling of it inside of you, and bite back a pleasure sound of your own. 

“Tell me what you’re doing,” you demand, stifling a gasp as your finger brushes over your clit through your underwear. “Tell me what it looks like.”

A quiet, breathy  _ ‘fuck’  _ comes through the phone line, then heavy breathing, then a low groan of longing. 

“Pants’re p-past my knees,” Julian tells you, but his voice is unsteady, tremulous. A shuddering exhale. “Boxers pushed down with them.”

Pale thighs to the hotel air, the coarse red hair near his groin, leading up his chest; you ask, “And your shirt?”

“Didn’t—didn’t make it totally off,” he admits, then swallows. “Unbuttoned, though. Just… just still hanging ‘round my shoulders.”

Your middle finger slips beneath the fabric, and you tease yourself, brushing at the hair between your legs but not yet the skin. There is no hiding the hitch in your voice. “And your— _ mmh, _ Julian, your hands? Your gorgeous, long-fingered hands—what are they doing?”

“I wish they were touching you.” The answer is rushed, desperate, and you gasp in reply as you find yourself bucking off the couch into you own hand at the sheer  _ need  _ in his voice. “Holding you, pulling you against me. Touching— _ hhha— _ slipping between your legs, to feel how wet you are. Fuck,  _ please, _ may I touch myself?”

“Not yet,” you tell him, smiling sweetly against the phone at his answering sob. “Answer me first: how do you want me to speak to you?” Your fingers hook into the band of your underwear, pushing it down your hips and past your knees. “What do you want me to say? How do you want to cum?”

A stifled moan, as though Julian is biting his lip closed. Then a gasp—you wonder if his nails are raking at his thighs, if he is pulling at his nipples—and then an answer. 

“Tell me what… you’re going to do to me. When I get home.”

“Put your hand around your cock, and I will.”

In answer came babble of low sobs and whispered curses, your name peppered in liberally among them and spoken always with the deepest worship and the filthiest tone of yearning. Julian was always particularly vocal during sex, but by the hitch in his breath and the pitch of his moans told you he had not been lying when he spoke about his hard he was. You part the lips of your sex and press your finger to the softness between and find you’re already dripping. 

The barest brush of your finger against your clit has you biting your lip. “I’m going to fuck you in the living room,” you decide, making the promise to the empty air. Your thighs clench and you buck against your finger as the thought comes to you: “I want to fuck you on top of the piano.”

A rush of blood goes straight to your thighs at the delighted gasp Julian makes in answer. “We’ll—We’ll break it,” he warns, a stutter in his voice that you’re sure can he traced to the pumping of his hand on his cock. “It can’t—won’t— _ fffu- _ ah!—won’t hold us both.”

“I know a spell for that. Hold us up, no strain in the legs at all, I’ll climb on top of you—take your whole cock in one thrust, bounce in your lap just how you like, hard and fast til the pleasure drives you half-mad.”

Your name has never sounded so filthy as it does then, stretched as it is over Julian’s pleasure sounds. “Don’t stop,” he begs you. “What else?”

“Gonna ride you and play with your tits, tease them ‘til they’re hard. Til every pinch sends a throb straight to your cock and leaves you bucking off the piano, too breathless even to moan.”

But Julian does moan then, a tortured and tight sound, reaching for more pleasure, reaching for release. “Slow your hand down,” you command him. “Wet your fingers in your mouth.”

There’s a wet choked sound, then silence. You fill it with a groan of your own. 

“Leave the piano keys uncovered,” you say as you touch yourself, thinking of Julian doing the same, one hand squeezing his cock while he coats the others, breath unsteady through his nose, trembling in anticipation of her command to fuck himself on them. “I want to fuck you so well you need to hold tight to something—want your hands to scramble over your head, fingertips on the ivory keys, the air filled with moans and the discordant tune your hands bang out on the piano—want you to come inside of me with the feeling of the music vibrating against your skin through the wood, the volume of it, humming right against your body—“

Julian cuts you off; “I’m not—I can’t— _ fuck, _ m’sorry, I’m not gonna last.”

You close your eyes and gasp, hips bucking towards your hand. You can picture Julian as he is—feet arched, toes pressed to the carpet, heels off the floor, muscles of his calves clenched right and trembling… legs spread wide, his cock leaking, glistening, and his hand unsteady as he strokes it—so close to the edge you could bring him over it with a word, if you wanted to. But you don’t. 

“Not yet. Don’t come yet.” You quicken the pace of your own fingers, running circles around your clit until your stomach is clenching against the onslaught of oncoming pleasure, toeing the line where you can’t turn back, keeping yourself right at the edge. 

“Will you be good for me, Julian,when you come home?” you murmur against the phone. “Let me tease you til you’re flushed and begging, til you cum from a single touch?”

“ _ Fuck,  _ darling,  _ yes— _ ‘ll be  _ so _ good for you, let you do whatever you want to me—“

“Press your fingers into yourself,” you tell him, just as you do the same. His cry of pleasure through the phone line almost drowns out yours—almost. The sudden fullness leaves you briefly mute. It’s not as good as Julian, but you think of the length of him, the feel of him snapping his hips and driving himself deeper into you—it’s not as good, but it’s enough, and it makes you moan a second time. 

“Oh, god, are you—?” Julian asks, barely audible. 

“Yes,” you answer, swallowing a cry as you grind your hips against your hand, your clit seeking the friction of your palm. “Pretending it’s you. Thinking of you buried inside of me, rolling my hips against yours and feeling the full press of you within me.” You think of his narrow hips between yours, his broad shoulders—the way the press of your palm against your clit is not quite as good as rubbing yourself against him— “I’m—I’m close, Ilya.”

Julian groans, hungry and lascivious and the sound of it goes right through you, leaves your sex clenching around your fingers. “I wish I was there. I’d pull your— _ hngh,  _ s’good—your wrist away, your fingers—I’d lick the taste of you from them before sucking your clit.”

A curse slips past your lips, then a whimper as you slide your fingers out of yourself and begin to circle your swollen clit again, thinking of Julian’s mouth, his tongue. “Ilya,” you sigh, then gasp as you brush your fingers against yourself just so, and your hips snap off the couch, and your thighs clench right. “Ilya, that feel so good—don’t stop—I’m gonna cum soon—“

“Let me cum with you,” Julian pleads, “I’m—ahh,  _ hah— _ I feel so tight, I’m not going to last.”

“Do it,” you tell him, quickening the pace of your fingers—rush of blood, dizziness, “I wanna feel you stiffen, spill inside of me, trickling out of me—dripping down my thighs—“

There’s a sound that might be a yelp—a loud sound of surprise, of delight, relief—and then Julian is a goner. 

“I’m coming, I’m coming—FUCK, oh, god, fuck, yes,  _ yes _ —!” and then nothing, no language, no words: just panting and cries of open-voweled relief as he cums into his own hand. 

Then, without so much as a pause, without missing a beat, he rasps into his phone. “Let me help you.” 

_ ‘Help me what?’  _ you think, too thick in the midst of you own mounting arousal to realize what he means until his voice pitches lower and he starts purring into the phone. 

“Come for me, darling,” he hums, breathes through his nose, the sound so close, like when he’s pressing his lips to your neck— “Come for me. Ohh, I could get hard all over again just thinking of you touching yourself, thinking of me—thinking of how  _ soft _ you feel when you’re wet and ready for me.”

Every word from his lips leaves your abdomen clenching tighter, pleasure building like a wave. “ _ Yes _ —please, Ilya, don’t stop.”

“You’re so good to me, darling,” Julian says. “So generous. Shame on me. I am a wicked man, for leaving you all alone in that big empty house. But I will make it up to you.”

Your thighs feel sweetly tight, your mind fuzzy. Even just the sound of his voice, low and sultry, is enough to bring you closer to your own finish. You barely force the word past your lips. “How?” 

“I’ll bring you a present,” Julian says, and you can hear the grin in his voice. “I already have the shop picked out. I’m sure the shopkeeper will be able to make a recommendation. A new lube to try from that company you like, maybe.” He paused, then added, “Or maybe a cock ring? One that vibrates, something to hum against your clit while you buck and thrust against me—“

You don’t hear the rest—your orgasm hits you like a tidal wave, a full-body shudder of rushing blood and overloaded nerves, sweet silence, completely full and empty of everything, just this, just pleasure, just love. 

It isn’t until you’ve come down, limp against the sofa beneath you, that you realize Julian’s voice cut out because the phone slipped from your ear. More quickly than you’re usually capable of moving post-orgasm, you reach over your shoulder and snatch it back, pressing the receiver to your ear just in time to catch Julian’s voice 

“—ling? Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” you reply, voice hoarse, breathing unsteady. “Yeah, sorry, love. I dropped the phone.”

A pause in which she can almost hear his bashfulness. “You came that hard?”

You grin. “Hard enough. Thank you.” 

For awhile you both stay on the line with each other. You don’t say anything, but you can each hear the other on the other end, the pace of your breathing slowing as you recover. It is almost like being together. 

Almost. You love him—you miss him. 

But it’s been less than a day, and it isn’t like him to call so soon—no matter how enjoyable the early call was, it leaves you a little concerned. “Why did you really call me, Julian? Are you nervous?”

There’s shuffling on the other end, as though he’s moving the phone from one ear to the other. 

“Mmm. A little. You know these ‘men of science’; I start going on about the role of empathy in medicine and half of them are guaranteed to roll their eyes. Doctor Valdemar is doing it already.”

“Don’t lay them any attention; they don’t know half as much as you. I know you’re going to do great, Ilyushka. Your paper is fantastic. You have nothing to be worried about. I love you.”

He hums in appreciation on the other end. “I love you too, dear. Don’t know what I’d do without you, to be honest. Being apart like this always drives it home.” Then a pause, before he added, “But, ahh… I have made a bit of a mess of things. I think I’d better go. Clean up, you know.”

“Good idea,” you reply, and you can’t keep the grin out of your voice when you add, “Can't have you going to to meet Nazali with stains down the front of your trousers.”

His voice is still hoarse and raspy with pleasure, but his tone is wry when he replies. “No, I cannot; they’d lose what little respect for me they still have. ...I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“I look forward to it,” you say, meaning it. “Goodnight, love.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Devorak. Talk to you soon.”

Then he adds, in a seductive voice of his own, “ _ Pleasant dreams.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if I'm going to finish all 31 of these, but people have been asking me about this series on Tumblr and I was taking a break from 'fog' so I figured why not. enjoy :)


	10. Sensory Deprivation (Julian x You, Julian x GN!Reader, self-insert)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Julian's birthday, and for a prompt from anon on Tumblr.  
> PROMPT: Ooo, maybe Julian with praise kink? And like he’s super bound and blindfolded and mc is straddling him?
> 
> Julian x Reader, Julian x You, self-insert, GN!MC  
> warnings: rope bondage, sensory deprivation (blindfold), dom/sub, gentle dom, biting, love bites, thigh hickeys, handjob, penetrative sex (reader receiving), praise kink, dirty talk

It isn’t the first time Julian’s been blindfolded—far from it—but it’s always different (always more intense) when he lets you do it to him. It’s a spell, he guesses, some illusion you’ve worked on the fabric to make the dark behind the fabric so dark and absolute. Before you came into his life, whenever another lover covered his eyes, there was always a little smidge of light to see by. When you tie the blindfold over his eyes, however (taking such care, as usual, not to catch any of his abutment curls in the knot) the world goes utterly dark, without even a hint of brightness, nor the slightest errant shadows by which he might judge your position in the room.

Julian saw nothing—heard nothing. He turned his head towards the sound of every house noise, every groaning floorboard, mistaking each slight breeze against his skin for your breath. You had left him (alone, bound, woefully untouched) for—what? A minute? Two? Ten? Julian couldn’t be sure. His heart beat frantically in his chest, and it made to measure; he was still riding the excitement of earlier, when you had spread his limbs wide and tied down his ankles and wrists, one fastened to each corner of the bed. 

Already his muscles felt tight, straining, testing the ropes that bound him… but by now you had plenty of practice with knots, and you’d tied him fast; the ropes had little give. In a few places along his wrist, Julian could actually feel the thick rope chafing—it would leave a mark, the skin near the sharp jut of his wrist rubbed raw and red by the end. That only heightens his arousal. He knows it will probably make you a little guilty later when you untie him, but he can’t help it, doesn’t say a word: he  _ wants _ this sex to mark him. By the time you had covered his eyes and tied his legs apart he had already been hard and leaking, and then you had left— _ abandoned _ him, although sometimes he thought he could still hear you breathing in the room—and despite how much time had passed, Julian was still hard, desperate with need, and the bite of the rope is better than nothing. 

Not enough, though. Three minutes more—or thirty?—and he can’t  _ see _ his cock begin to soften but he can feel it, body left taut and waiting for too long. Fatigue takes him, slows his breathing. Subtly, Julian relaxes into his bindings, each part of him sinking into the mattress beneath him as the tension leaves him. 

The barest tickle of your nails against the sole of his foot wrenches a gasp from Julian’s throat. Your fingertips glide along the magnificent arch of his foot, around his ankle, up his calf, and along the inside of his thigh… before you’ve made it fully up the length of his leg Julian is straining against the ropes again, that one light lick of your fingers enough to wake every inch of his skin. You trace from thigh to abdomen, scratching over his ribs; you finish off with a rude pinch to his nipple, then retreat from the edge of the bed. 

Julian holds his body perfectly suspended, still stiff, back bent off the bed and seeking your touch like he’s waiting for you to come back. Hopeful, desperate, he waits; but when it’s clear further touch isn’t forthcoming, he huffs, collapses back to the mattress with a pitiful sigh, a beautiful sheen of sweat glistening on his cheeks. 

In the darkness behind the blindfold, your voice sounds so close to him, and so loud: “Being so  _ good _ for me, Julian. So patient. Not even begging.”

Julian bites his lip, holding in a stifled moan. It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed a certain quality in your voice—a texture, a tone, a rasp or lilt of  _ something _ —but it sends your praise singing through his blood, and it has never seemed so loud and so thrilling as it does now, when he could not see your mouth shape the words. He nodded twice in sharp assent. 

Julian looks so beautiful, so vulnerable in the way he’s spread over the bed in front of you. You watch him as you sweep your hair out of your face, fastening it back so that it won’t fall around your face, tickle Julian’s skin and give away your proximity. You had taken great care to spread his legs as wide as you could when you tied him down, and his hips looked so wide, so open, the inviting curve of his hip bones through his skin making a throne of his lap. 

_ ‘Not yet _ ,’ you remind yourself—it is Julian’s birthday, after all, and he had asked you to tease him first.

Of course, you hadn’t told him how you we’re going to do it. That, you left as a surprise. You had been thinking lately, though, about how Julian so loves to be marked; about how he  _ could _ be marked, now, how a bruise could be sucked into his neck without the blemish instantly healing and fading away. Or anywhere, really—you knew by now Julian just wanted to be bit, and he wasn’t picky about where. 

You take in Julian’s spread legs, his muscles thighs… and then you bow your head, and nipping your teeth at the sensitive skin on the inside of his thigh.

Julian gasps again, a choked sound of surprised delight, and strains against his bindings. Then, remembering himself, he hastily settles back against the mattress, forcing his body to lie flat, if not relaxed. His cheeks color pink; he swallows, throat jumping. 

“S-sorry,” Julian says, forcing the word past his lips, voice unsteady. “I’ll be good—I’ll be quiet.”   


You grin, but Julian can’t see it—you press a wet, open-mouthed kiss to his opposite thigh, and Julian’s whole leg shakes beneath it. 

“I don’t want you to be quiet, Julian,” you tell him, sweetly, lips brushing his skin as you speak. “Don’t hold anything back.”   
  
“ _ Fuck _ .” Julian mouths the word more than he says it, lips soundlessly making the shape as he tilts his head back and digs his heels into the mattress, trying to widen the spread of his legs, to press himself closer to your mouth. Unnecessary. You pin him fast against the mattress, one hand pressed to his hips, the other kneading the thick, tightly wound muscles of his leg. 

Julian’s body shakes with the tortured sound he makes when you take the skin of his leg between your teeth. His toes curl; he bites his lip, turning it red and swollen while you do the same, sucking red, then purple and blue into the cream of his thighs. 

True to form, Julian holds nothing back. He moans so prettily for you, asks you to to leave him mottled with love bites, begs you to press your fingertips into the ones you’ve already left behind and deepen them. 

All Julian has is the dark: the close, snug blackness behind the blindfold and the warmth of your mouth, the bite of the rope. Yes, he wishes he could see. He wants to see your eyes—whether your face is full of concentration or mischief as you mark him with your mouth—he wants to see the marks blossoming under your teeth, but he’ll see them later. Evidence. (He knows already he’ll be pressing his fingers into his bruises when you’re not around, thinking of your mouth on him,  _ closing his hand around himself _ —) Now he only has the ache of them, the abused skin stinging. He had tried to keep track of them all, each place you marked him a brilliant point of pleasure-pain, as though you’d covered him in constellations. Too wild he was, too deep in the throes of his desire to keep any numbers in his head, to map them while you worked. You hadn’t stopped yet—that was enough. 

But then you do. Your mouth retreats and does not return, and Julian sobbed to the dark, thighs wet and cold and shaking. 

A warm puff of your breath is the only warning before your mouth closes over him again. Your lips meet his sex and he moans, a moan that rides and pitches to another pitiful sob as he feels his cock hit the back of your throat, your tongue against it, the tip of your nose pressed into the hairs at his groin. He can’t see your face, but he can hear with perfectly clarity the wet sounds your mouth makes around him— _ it is so dark _ —your mouth has never felt quite so warm, so soft around him. 

His fingers clench into fists; his throat tightens with a sound of wretched, consummate pleasure, but soon as the sound is free you abandon him again. Poor Julian, wet and cold, alone—throbbing—then  _ warm _ , a tongue drawn against his pert nipple— _ “fuck,  _ darling, ah!” 

You hold his nipple between your teeth, rolling your tongue against it, and press two fingers to Julian’s lips, then into his mouth, shoving his answering groan of pleasure back down his throat. The walls of his mouth vibrate around your fingers with the stifled sound, and then Julian begins to suck at them, pulling them into his mouth right to the last knuckle and licking them damp.

When your fingers are fully slick, you pull them, trail them down the path of hair that runs from his chest to his navel… then you wrap your hand around his cock, and pump. 

You have to stifle a laugh at the sound Julian makes—almost a squawk—something between pleasure and surprise, but laced with panic. His hips jerk, flinching away from your touch. “S’too good,” he manages in a slurred half-whine, his arms tight and trembling against the clutch of the rope. “M’gonna cum, and I haven’t been allowed yet.”   
  
You release his cock with a sound of mock-surprise. Then you reach for his chin, tilting his head gently towards yours and kissing him, slowly, sweetly, deeply. He moans when you lick your way into his mouth, but as soon as he does you pull away again. 

You grin, pat his cheek gently. “What put you on your best behavior, Doctor Devorak?”

Julian colors and licks his lips, tasting the memory of your kiss. He answers, meekly, “I always want to behave—to be good—for you.”

You can’t help it this time—you  _ do _ laugh. “That’s most definitely not true. Sometimes you misbehave on purpose.” Sometimes he does it to provoke you, when he wants to be punished. You pause, considering. 

“Is that what this is?” you ask him. “Are you hoping for a reward for your good behavior?”

“No! Of course not, I didn’t mean—!”

But you cut him off with your hand around his cock again, stroking him slowly. Julian clenches his teeth and keens; your fingertips squeeze his flushed head, spread his slick along his shaft. “What is it, Julian?” you ask, tone innocent end as Julian writhes beneath you. “You can tell me. What do you want?”

“ _ F-fuck, _ that feels—darling, if you don’t stop, I’ll finish.”

“That’s never embarrassed you too badly before,” you coo in his ear, and Julian’s cheeks go two shades redder. When he still doesn’t answer, your thumb finds his slit and runs over it firmly, repeatedly, relentlessly. 

“Come on, birthday boy,” you say, and in the darkness behind the blindfolds, it feels to Julian like your voice is warm and as soft as velvet.  _ “Make a wish.” _

Julian’s muscles spasm, tighten. He wants to cum—he  _ could  _ cum, he is so close. But the dark is close, too, and wrapped up in that soft blackness everything feels so intense: your hand and your mouth and the silky sound of your praise in his ear. He wants to cum, but not like this. He’s too close for caution—when he answers, it’s with an urgent shout. 

_ “I want to cum inside you!” _

Then there was nothing—or not nothing, but less of something, less pleasure (nothing bearing down warm and tight and snug around his aching cock) but less building pressure, too, the tide of Julian’s orgasm rolling back, retreating. And darkness. And the sound of heavy breathing—his and yours both. Julian feels every hair on his body stand on end, as if every part of him is reaching for you, calling back your touch, and the warmth of your body. But there was nothing, no sensation but the bed beneath him. He is right on the edge but he’d not fallen over. Julian finds himself sobbing; whether in relief or frustration, he isn’t sure.

“There, Julian. Was that really so difficult?” 

There’s a hitch in your breath that you cannot hide; Julian hears it, too, listening for every slight noise, and he knows that it means you are spreading yourself, preparing yourself to give him what he’s asked for. 

His mind feels thick, stupid; Julian thinks about you burying your fingers inside yourself, readying to take him, and his tongue becomes clumsy. But then he can feel the mattress sink on each side of his waist, and he seizes control of himself—he has to—already shaking from the thought, ready to cum at the the implication alone: that the sink of the mattress beneath him means that you are crouched over him, about to take his cock inside of you. So many things now might topple him over that edge if he is not careful. He can hold it back. Not forever. 

“ _ Please _ ,” Julian begs, his hips bucking off the bed as much as the rope will allow. “Please, yes—“ but then the slick head of his cock meets your entrance, and his ability to form language abandons him. Julian shouts, begs, incoherent and desperate as you bear down on him, taking him inch by inch into the wet, tight heat of your body. Two rolls of your hips and Julian is already coming undone. 

He chokes back a moan, fights for the words. He is already so close and the feeling of you around him is too good. “I’m not gonna last,” he warns, voice hoarse and unsteady, “I’m gonna cum—!”

“No, you’re not. Hold off, Ilya,” you tell him, the command firm and decisive and a little tart. You place a hand flat on his rib cage, holding him down against the bed as you grind against him. “I wanna get off a little, too.”

“Fuck, yes, darling.” Julian groans beneath you; you can feel the rumble of it in his chest beneath your palm. “Get off on me, use me,  _ please _ —cum on me—“

It used to turn you off, a little, when he would talk like that. But you’ve loved him long enough by now to know that  _ ‘use me’  _ no longer means  _ ‘I am not deserving of pleasure;’  _ that when Julian says  _ ‘use me,’ _ what he really means is  _ ‘it pleases me to please you, press yourself against me, take what you want from me and I’ll gain from the giving.’ _

You hardly need the encouragement. You always love this: every inch of Julian’s cock inside of you, pressing against you. You love how  _ full  _ Julian makes you feel. “Your cock feels so good in me, Julian,” you tell him, head falling forward as you ride him.

Julian gasps at the praise; the muscles of his stomach clench, then quiver, but you don’t let up. 

“Mmm, you should see yourself,” you tell him, snapping your hips against his, quickening your pace, driving him deeper into you. “You’re glowing, Julian. Glorious—like religious erotica, like a painting of a saint.”

Just barely Julian manages to laugh, although (forced as it is through the pleasure clench of his chest and his throat) it sounds more like a wheeze. Then he moans, low and obscene. His hips snap upward, driving his cock inside of you, and he whimpers. 

It feels incredible—makes you giddy, briefly mute from the ecstatic stretch of him within you—but you still yourself, calm yourself, pin Julian’s hips to the bed and slow to a stop on top of him. “Not yet,” you told him, firmly. “Not yet.”

Julian heaves a petulant, wretched sob. He trembles. Slowly, as slowly as the strength in your legs will permit, you lift yourself off of him. 

You sheathe his cock back inside of you just as slowly. 

Julian’s body stiffens beneath you in fits and starts. By now his breathing is as heavy as though he’d been running. his ribs stretching against his skin, his lungs so tight from holding back from his orgasm that his moans are hardly more than wretched, hoarse gasps. His arms are trembling in the grip of the rope, but the rope holds fast, a taut, blood-red line running from bedpost to wrist

“Fuck, Julian, you look so good tied up,” you tell him, and he makes a wet sound of approval and hunger, demand for more praise; you give it. “Like you’re  _ my _ present, like it’s my birthday—fuck, I could have gotten myself off, just looking at you and touching myself.”

“No,” he whined, pitiful, shaking his head, hips jerking weakly but steadily to meet yours. “Let me help you, let me fuck you.”

“And your legs— _ fuck,  _ Julian, the bruises inside your thighs, like you squeezed a clutch of blueberries between them—I’m gonna kiss every mark, every day til they fade.”

“Please,” Julian sobbed, “I’m—I warn you—I’m— _ h-hha _ , ohhh—if you keep talking to me like that—I’m too close, I can’t—“

Darkness, the feel of you around him, softness of your ass against his hips as you drive yourself onto him again and again—and then your fingers on his face. Your fingers hook beneath the fabric of the blindfold, and when you tear it away from his face, Julian cries out, his grey eyes blinking rapidly in the sudden brightness.

Then he sees you—flushed with exertion, fucking him hard—catches the look on your face right before your orgasm takes you—watches the pillar of his cock sinking in and out of you—and that’s it—he doesn’t even have the time to moan, to warn you, he’s coming, spilling, wrists maybe bleeding but Julian doesn’t care: all that matters is this, the rhythm you set on top of him as you ride your orgasm and his, and the way you look at him—the same way you’ve been looking at him all the time that he’s blindfolded—holding his eyes like he is yours, like he is everything, like you would do anything for him, any time he asked.

Even when he finishes, he’s still shuddering, eyes closed as he catches his breath. He opens them, though, to look at you again when you press a soft kiss to the tip of his nose.

“Happy Birthday, Julian.”

He goes faintly pink, but then his face splits in his widest smile yet: a little bashful and a little sleepy, but full of contentment and unreserved, brilliant affection. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: i know literally nothing about rope bondage so for the love of god if that’s a thing you’re gonna go do please consult someone who is actually knowledgeable about those things


	11. Dacryphilia (Julian x GN!Reader, Julian x You)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt on Tumblr where I am @4biddenleeches:  
> "If you’re still looking for suggestions, honestly anything filthy feat. whoever is involved making Julian cry in the middle of it all because he feels SO incredibly loved"
> 
> Dacryphilia: being aroused by tears/sobbing.
> 
> Warnings: NSFW. Penetrative sex (reader receiving.)

In the beginning, the love was always quick and a little vicious.   
  
Metal-sweet feeling of your fingers pressed to his wound beneath the spectral glow of starstrand, lighting up your eyes like pools of stars as the crushing, cringing delight of your touch drove Julian to his knees. Pressed against the mirror with a mask covering his face, his pleasure-pain as you take his neck between your teeth, biting the lobe of his ear hard enough to draw blood—rush of blood, then, to his cheeks, flushed excitement—rushing downwards…. And bruising your bodies on the books left on the library desk, crawling over one another, grinding with such determination, Julian was practically fucking you through his cloths.   
  
It’s still like that, sometimes: biting and clawing, heaving and gasping, desperate for every inch of friction. But now, sometimes, it isn’t.   
  
Sometimes, it’s slow.   
  
You don’t rip Julian’s shirt over his head with quite the same violence. You’re more careful of his shoulders; you don’t want to wrench the shirt over his head too hard. You untuck his shirt neatly; you free him of it efficiently. You are more careful, patient—no less hungry. The look in your gaze smolders, and Julian’s stomach clenches at the intensity of it, eagerness pooling warm between his hips. But when you lean in to kiss him it’s slow, and your mouth against his—though open and generous—is unhurried.   
  
Julian has had to adjust to it. At first it had been difficult for him, surrendering to such lovemaking. Love like velvet, soft and warm, without any of the jagged edges that Julian had become accustomed to tearing himself against for even a bare hint of pleasure. Now, when you guide him gently to the bedroom, he does not fight you; he no longer dares you to shove him, hit him, drag him. He lets you weave your fingers with his, and follows obediently.   
  
Sometimes, Julian still enjoys being teased; tonight, however, he holds you close against him, bites his lip and nods his head as you flatten your palm against his thigh and draw it up between his legs, pressing the heel of your palm against him as you do. Julian gasps; you run your hand over him, and he smothers his answering whimper against your shoulder. Already he is half-swollen, straining against his pants. 

Easy to be rid of them, then. Julian does not resist; he lifts his hips as you pull him out of his clothes. The whole tall, pale, freckled mess of him bare on the bed. The hair on his arms and his legs standing on end in the cold air of the bedroom. You wrap an arm beneath his head, around his shoulders, drawing him close; you spit into your hand then take his length in it.

It’s slow, and it’s  _warm_ —then warmer. Radiant summer-warmth of your magic, and then, Julian can’t help it; his hips buck into your touch. Such pleasure, but it’s the slow burn of devotion in the touch that leaves his body trembling. 

“Please,” Julian whispers, knowing that you know him well enough to guess his desire by the pitch of his plea. You can; your grip on his shoulder tightens and you tilt your head and when your lips meet Julian’s part, his mouth opening in invitation.

It’s a tongue-heavy, cloudy-headed, gentle rapture in your arms. It is tender and it is soft; it is all for Julian’s pleasure, and none of it hurts. It no longer needs to, not always. For the first time, Julian realizes this is because, at last, he believes he deserves it—that he can have pleasure without tempering it with punishment.   
  
Julian asks himself: has he ever had a love like this?  
  
Your hands, your mouth—you are so gentle with him. All gestures and caresses laden with love and affection, all careful and measured, coaxing only heady pleasure and no discomfort, not a hint of suffering. Making his body tighten and tune like an instrument, sing like a bow to strings, vibrating with the same brightness.   
  
Has Julian ever had a love like this? No, he has not. Nothing has ever even come close.   
  
You break apart only for so that you can wet your hand again. When your fingers close around the head of his cock Julian writhes, pressing against you, hips stuttering a broken rhythm against your fist. Considerate and affectionate you coo to him, “How does that feel? Is that good?” 

Your eyes on Julian, gauging his reaction, judging how best to please him—it makes his heart ache so painfully, over laden with such rich delight that, for a second, Julian thinks he might cry. 

When he doesn’t reply right away, you only curl closer. Your lips brush his brow, then the corner of his mouth, his cheek, the lid beneath his eye. “So shy tonight,” you whisper, squeezing your hand around him. “Why so quiet? Tell me how you wanna be touched. Let me make you feel good…”  
 _  
‘Mercy, mercy, I cannot endure this.’_

Julian does cry, then, and—embarrassingly,  _horrifyingly_ —once he gets started, he can’t seem to stop. It starts with one or two spilled tears, but soon, he was full on ugly crying, red-faced, wet-cheeked. Something broken is shaking loose in him, a tightness coming free.

At once, you release him. “Julian? Julian, what’s the matter?”

Everything—or nothing. How is he to put the words to it? Julian feels so full, choking on his own sudden sense of self-worth. Impossible, yes—it is almost impossible, still, that in all this wide world, you found him, chose him.   
  
“Have a little pity on me,” Julian manages, thick and salty through the sobbing. “I wasn’t made to be loved like this, to be worshipped. You can do what you like to me: beat me, slap me, kick me. But this… this gentle rapture, serene ecstasy! I don’t know what to do with it.”  
  
Curtain of tears blurring you; when Julian blinks them free, sends them running down his cheeks, he finds you smiling. “Open yourself to it,” you tell him, sweetly, brushing his tears from his cheeks with his knuckles. “Receive it. Let it lift you.” 

Julian swallows, salt of tears and phlegm and doubts he won’t deign to voice. “I don’t know how to do that.”

Your grin only widens. “Then I’ll teach you. Starting now. Can you lie back for me? Perfectly flat, just like that.”

Julian shudders, the blankets cool to the touch underneath him. He watches you move over him, his eyes heavy lidded but still wet. 

Then you take his cock in hand again, and Julian keens—and his eyes squeeze shut, and tears run from out the corners. It’s too much—it’s  _so good_ —it’s brief—it lasts just as long as it takes for Julian to come back to full hardness, and then your hand is guiding him between your legs. Julian’s eyes fly open just in time to catch you angling your hips, then bearing down onto him.

The sound Julian makes is choked and wet, struck wordless by the taut heat of you around him. His toes curl. He digs his heels into the mattress and tries to buck his hips off the bed but, “No,” you murmur gently, guiding his hips firmly back down. “Let me take care of you. Soft, like.”

Julian’s thighs clench and shake, and he bites back another moan. Incredibly, infuriatingly, his eyes begin to sting again. 

“You deserve to be taken care of,” you tell him, and Julian’s whole body tightens to hear it. Rising and sinking slowly around him, drawing out every sensation, you tell him, “You deserve pleasure enough to make you shake, so much it exhausts you. That and more.” Each time you sink around him, Julian swears you clench a little tighter, seize him a little longer before you draw away and relent. You pledge, “I am going to give it to you—all the love you didn’t believe you deserved,” and you run your hands up his chest.

Julian can hardly bear it. Has he ever had a love like this? No. The sex is so slow it is agony, ecstasy, agonized ecstasy; his abdomen is taut and his chest feels tight. You lean over him (your chest against his, warm to the touch, Julian’s heart thudding against his ribs as though it could leap out and join yours) and whisper in his ear, “I love you, and if it takes me the rest of my life, I’m going to convince you you’re worthy of it.”

A sob slips past Julian’s lips, then another. His stomach, his chest is so tight—your nose brushes along his cheek, and with a half-stifled groan of satisfaction, your rhythm falters—and something inside Julian twists. His vision blurs with tears and his chest begins to shake from weeping. 

“I lo-I love you too,” Julian manages past the tears, holding you tight as you rut back against him. “I was so lost, I d-don’t—I needed you, I need you…”

Your hips begin to snap a little more sharply, a little less regularly, and when you bear down on Julian’s cock you’re so _tight_ —   
  
“Oh! Hha, ahhh, I’m g-gonna cum, m’gonna—f-fuck fuck  _fuck_ —“  
  
“Yes, gods, Julian— _hahh_ , I can feel it—!”

 

 

Only after he’s finished—after you’ve had your own pleasure from the feel of him inside of you, and now, leaking out of you—does Julian’s sobbing begin to settle, and his breathing even, and his sniffling cease. You pull yourself off of his softening cock and stretch out alongside him, a look of lazy bliss on your face as you reach over to wipe the sweat and the tears from his face.

Julian’s body is limp, fucked out, jelly. Still he manages to roll onto his side and curl against you, his forehead against your cheek, his hand on your stomach, his legs tangled with yours. He cries a little more against your neck, leaves the skin wet. You let him, but when you start to rub his shoulders and run your hand through his hair, he calms.

“I’m sorry,” Julian manages, finally, when his crying ceases. “It’s so unsexy. And I know, I  _know_  it’s stupid, to still feel this way, after being with you so long.”

“It’s not stupid, Julian,” you reassure him, pressing your lips to his hairline. “I get overwhelmed sometimes myself. I never… it’s never been like this before, for me. Being with someone, I mean. Sometimes it just feels like…”

Julian laughed, weakly. “Like it’s too good to be true?”

You shake your head. “No.” You cup the side of his face and lift it from your neck, pressing your forehead against Julian’s. “Like it’s the only thing that  _could_ be true.”


End file.
